I wanted to rate this higher than I did... Sassinak starts out well, with a clear writing style, a strong story, and a sympathetic and capable heroine. She is competent, smart, and fair. I like that she befriends people that others have a prejudice against. I also like that she is relatively relaxed in her relationships. They start, and they end, and no fuss is needed on that account.
The reason I'm not rating this higher, is that I started missing more and more about the story, until I really couldn't quite follow in the last part of the book. Perhaps I was not reading carefully enough. On the other hand, I read this the same I read everything else. If I was less attentive at certain parts, it was because they were not interesting enough. In any case, I went back to certain parts when I got lost, and I still couldn't quite make heads or tails of it. What I did get is that the way the traitor on board was finally found came pretty much falling out of the sky. So I'd rate this 3.5 because of its good parts, but I'm rounding it off downwards. ( )

McCaffrey, Anne, and Elizabeth Moon. Sassinak. Planet Pirates No. 1. Baen, 1990.
By 1990, Anne McCaffrey was a writer whose name on the cover would increase sales. She was best known for her fantasy novels, especially the Dragonriders of Pern, and for her science fantasy series that began with The Ship Who Sang. She was used to collaborative writing and had already franchised out some stories in the Pern series. In collaborating with Elizabeth Moon in the first and third volumes of the Planet Pirates series, she was working with a young writer who had only been publishing for two years. I don’t know how they divided up the work, but if I had to guess I would say that most of the novel belongs to Moon, except perhaps the shape-changing aliens, and some of the last section. McCaffrey may have had in mind something like Andre Norton’s young adult planetary romances, but what emerges in Sassinak is military science fiction more like David Weber and later novels by Moon. The novel opens with a hard-edged story of young Sassinak’s enslavement by planet pirates. There follows the story of her rescue, her time at the Fleet Academy, and her career as a Fleet officer. The novel ends with an adventure in which Sassinak rescues one of her ancestors who has been in cryosleep for years. I hope someone interviews Moon about her experience working with McCaffrey. 3.5 stars. ( )

We are never even told the name of the lieutenant's first ship. What? This book is a mess.

Don't blame Elizabeth Moon, because her military fiction is much, much better than this. ( )

The last section was a confusing mess, probably because the storyline merges with other books by Anne McCaffrey, but it wasn't laid out well enough to stand on its own and for me to fully understand. Before that, though, I loved following Sassinak through her life, struggles, and ultimate triumphs against the backdrop of an interesting worldbuilding in space. ( )

I am a big fan of fantasy and science fiction novels especially if they are long and have several books in the series. I really enjoy a series of books that I can immerse myself in and I first picked up an Elizabeth Moon novel because it was long and part of a multi-novel series. I continue to read her books because I find them engrossing and highly enjoyable. ( )