Captive

Fighting for freedom on Franssisi Four - Hannah Steenbock writing as Joanna Steenen

About this series:

This is NOT your classic SF tale with spaceships, laser battles and air locks. It takes place on one planet, and only that one, and there is time spent at the hunter/gatherer level of technology.

It's NOT Romance, although it involves plenty of explicit bed scenes and eventually, love between humans and aliens (someone called it polyamory, in fact).

It is EPIC in scope, if not in cast.

It takes the hero, Zell, from a fairly primitive life in the Wilderness to a stark prison cell where he is expected to demonstrate his prowess as a human male. It lays out how he first builds friendship and then an alliance that will not just change his life but also that of his alien friends. It chronicles their many adventures together.

This is a series that explores aspects of morality in many, many ways. What is acceptable, what works, what is categorically wrong? Lots of answers to that, in many different layers of society. Lots of cruelty and lots of caring, lots of heartache, and lots of daring...

Also what happens if people change their minds and defy tradition? What if people try out something new and go against long-held beliefs? Pushback happens, of course, even as something new arises, as beliefs and convictions and traditions change...

The adventure continues with Captive, with Zell in the hands of the Dile master who owns him now.

(Warning: This is not a story for children. It contains violence, slavery and explicit bed scenes - but also a lot of caring, the building of frienship and the creation of a found family across species.)

Best reading order:

Decoy

Captive

Fugitive

Catalyst

Fulcrum

Flux