Doona

About the Doona series

Earth's population crisis pushes a group of human colonists to the lush planet Doona, only for them to discover it's already inhabited — by the Hrruban, a feline humanoid species whose own government considers the planet exclusively theirs. Anne McCaffrey's 1969 debut in this universe, Decision at Doona, imagines a first-contact story resolved not through conflict but through Doona's youngest colonists and Hrruban cubs simply befriending each other faster than the adults can build a diplomatic crisis, forcing both governments to accept an unauthorized shared colony as a fait accompli.

McCaffrey left the world alone for over two decades before returning to it with co-author Jody Lynn Nye for two further novels, Crisis on Doona (1992) and Treaty at Doona (1994, also published as Treaty Planet), which follow the now-adult children of the original settlers as the fragile human-Hrruban arrangement is tested by outside political interests looking to exploit the planet's unofficial status. The trilogy is smaller in scale than McCaffrey's other series, but its premise — that children raised without inherited prejudice can out-diplomat their parents' governments — gives it a distinct, optimistic register within her body of work.

How to read this series

Read in publication order: Decision at Doona (1969), Crisis on Doona (1992), Treaty at Doona (1994, also published as Treaty Planet). There's a 23-year real-world gap between the first book and its sequels, and the story picks up a generation later with the original colonists' children as adults, so reading Decision at Doona first is important groundwork even though the plot itself has moved on. The trilogy is short and best read straight through; there's no meaningful entry point besides the beginning.