Planet Pirates is a series of Space Opera novels by Elizabeth Moon, Anne McCaffrey, and Jody Lynn Nye. It comprises of the novels:
- Sassinak (McCaffrey and Moon)
- The Death of Sleep (McCaffrey and Nye)
- Generation Warriors (McCaffrey and Moon)
It is a continuation of McCaffrey's Dinosaur Planet books.
This series includes examples of:
- Aliens Are Bastards: The galaxy is littered with planets which once contained life but have been destroyed. No one knows who did it or why.
- The Alternet: "Looking GLASS", the Galactic Library All-Search System.
- Break the Cutie: This is the main plot line in Sassinak.
- The Captain: Sassinak in the later books.
- Fantastic Fighting Style: The Discipline is this and more.
- Fantastic Racism: There is a lot of this around, with most races having a poor opinion of at least one other race. Sassinak is an exception to this. In the end, the Theks decree that the Seti be punished as a race.
- Fantasy Contraception: There are contraceptive implants that last a few years before needing replacement.
- The Federation: The Federated Sentient Planets comprise a federation of multiple species and worlds, though the member races seem to remain mostly distrustful of each other.
- Foreign Queasine: In The Death of Sleep, the vegan protagonist is undone when she realizes an hors d'oeuvre she's been enjoying actually contains meat.
- Future Slang:
- Characters use "Muhlah!" or "Mullah!" where we'd use "God!" or "Christ!" While this is clearly some sort of religious figure (there's also "Thank Muhlah!" and "Muhlah knew..."), further details are not provided.
- "Plasmic!" gets used once by a young boy as the equivalent of "cool!" or "awesome!"
- Heavy Worlder: The genetically-enhanced Heavyworlders, due to their history, resent and distrust "lightweights" to the point of being open to manipulative propoganda and conspiracy theories by the planet pirates. In a greater society of near-universal vegetarians, they also have to eat meat due to their altered metabolism.
- Human Popsicle: Sassinak's Great-great-great-grandmother Lunzie keeps getting turned into one of these, through no fault of her own. Due to having been in cold sleep so long and so many times, she ends up biologically younger then Sassinak.
- Made a Slave: Sassinak.
- Magic Pants: Wefts, the shapeshifting alien of the setting, are implied to shapeshift the appropriate clothing. Fanservice is generally avoided, however - they're naturally a species of crustacean with six sexes, and fall into the Uncanny Valley when assuming human form.
- Manchurian Agent
- Military School: In the first book, after Sassinak is rescued from the slavers, she joins the military and attends the Navy Academy. She graduates with honors and as cadet commandant, which is stated to be rather rare.
- Nubile Savage: In-universe, with Lampshade Hanging. Sassinak talks about a fanservice-heavy movie series about a gorgeous Action Girl that she watched as a kid and mentions that now that she's older, she thinks it's rather unlikely that a girl who was raised as a slave in a mining colony would grow up to have the body of a supermodel, or that said girl could climb up a sheer cliff in the buff and reach the top looking like she'd just come back from the spa.
- Orphan's Ordeal: In Sassinak, Space Pirates destroy the title character's home, murders her parents, turns her best friend into a depressed wreck, and makes her their slave. She spends the rest of her life setting things right.
- Planet Looters: A central theme of the series; the planet itself, with its colony-safe environment, is the resource the pirates are after.
- P.O.V. Sequel: To the Dinosaur Planet books.
- Real Men Eat Meat: The Heavyworlders take this view, making the best of a biological necessity that sets them apart in a civilisation where vegetarianism is the law.
- Silicon-Based Life: The oldest and most powerful race in the Galaxy is Silicon based, and continues to grow as long as they keep feeding. Some of their elders are said to be the size of small moons.
- Space Navy: Sassinak becomes a Navy officer in the first book, and remains so throughout the series.
- Space Pirates: As you might expect from the series title. They evade the scale problems by mainly hitting settlements and ships near planets. They also go a step further in many cases, being Planet Looters who will enslave and/or kill the inhabitants of a colony world, then settle their own people on it.
- Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The Theks have, as far as the lesser races can tell, infinite power. A decree by the Theks is absolute over the FSP and all other beings, and they're capable of wiping out a fleet with a trivial exercise of power. Being Silicon-Based Life, though, they don't have much to do with lesser beings except in the event of a major crisis, or their own interests being affected.
- Veganopia: Vegetarianism is legally mandated by The Federation, to such a strict degree that omnivorous species must unanimously swear off meat or be kicked out of the FSP. However, fish are eaten on colony worlds, while the heavyworlders and Seti ignore the rule on their own worlds. "Don't ask, don't tell" seems to be the effective rule.
