Sassinak

Sassinak is a science fiction novel by the American writers Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon, published by Baen Books in 1990.

It is the first book in the Planet Pirates trilogy, and it also carries on the story McCaffrey had begun with Dinosaur Planet in 1978, which is why the last part of the novel takes its crew to that planet and its surviving expedition. The book is arranged in four movements: Sassinak's enslavement and schooling, her first posting, her promotion and first command, and the voyage in which the two halves of the series meet. Her early life is described without flinching, and what distinguishes her from the other captives is the combination of strength, stubbornness and the friendship she strikes up with a captured Fleet crewman. The novel's later interest is in how she uses a career spent chasing pirates, since a woman who has been cargo herself has a particular view of the trade. McCaffrey wrote the second book in the trilogy with Jody Lynn Nye and the third with Moon, and the shared universe of the three is a matter of trade routes, slavers and the law's long reach rather than a single continuing cast.