Anne & Todd McCaffrey

Dragonriders of Pern — (1969-2010) The original two trilogies were published 1969-1979.
Publisher: HOW CAN ONE GIRL SAVE AN ENTIRE WORLD? To the nobles who live in Benden Weyr, Lessa is nothing but a ragged kitchen girl. For most of her life she has survived by serving those who betrayed her father and took over his lands. Now the time has come for Lessa to shed her disguise — and take back her stolen birthright. But everything changes when she meets a queen dragon. The bond they share will be deep and last forever. It will protect them when, for the first time in centuries, Lessa’s world is threatened by Thread, an evil substance that falls like rain and destroys everything it touches. Dragons and their Riders once protected the planet from Thread, but there are very few of them left these days. Now brave Lessa must risk her life, and the life of her beloved dragon, to save her beautiful world...

Original Trilogy:

Harper Hall Trilogy:

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Dragonriders of Pern

It’s been my longstanding theory on multi-book series (by multi-book I mean ones that go well beyond the standard trilogy) that the books tend to fall into four categories: great ones (usually early on), good ones that don't match the passion or excitement of the top ones but still sweep you along, adequate ones that serviceably move the grand story along but aren't particularly original or well-written, and the bad ones that were just spit out because the series’ fans would buy them even if the covers were made of poison ivy leaves. Anne McCaffrey’s classic Pern series is a prime example of this classification system.

Pern is a classic for a reason. The first trilogy Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon, are simply great. The writing is taut, the characters strong and vibrant, the storyline compelling. And her dragons are, especially at the time, truly original creations, full characters in their own right, though both their and the human characterizations are enhanced by her presentation of their bonds — a strength throughout the series. One feels as sad at the loss of a dragon as one does at the loss of a human character, and when one goes without the other, the pain is truly piercing.

The setting for the series is the Planet Pern, colonized centuries ago by humans whose memories, technology, and ruins have long been forgotten in the wake of the destruction caused by Thread, destructive spores that cross space to land on Pern whenever its sister planet comes close enough. Pern has regressed to pre-technological life due to Threads earlier devastation. The major defense against Thread are dragons, bioengineered by the original colonists (though too late to save their society) to communicate telepathically with their riders and to be able to breathe fire so as to burn Thread from the sky before it touches and ruins the land.

In the time of the first trilogy, due to orbital quirks, it’s been so long since Thread has last fallen that its existence has become myth and the defenses against it either utterly lost or scorned. Only one dragon weyr (community of riders and dragons) exists and though its leader, F’Lar is sure Thread is due to fall again, his warnings fall on dead ears. In Dragonflight, he desperately seeks to convince people of the danger as well as find someone who can impress a queen dragon so he can start to rebuild the dragon force that will be required. His quest is resolved when he finds Lessa, who becomes his weyrwoman and who makes an astounding discovery and then takes an even more astounding risk to save the planet from threadfall. 

Dragonquest continues their story, adding new characters and new conflicts while thread continues to fall and threaten their way of life. The White Dragon continues the story chronologically, shifting its focus to the much younger Jaxom and his “runt” dragon Ruth. Jaxom is  both a Lord Holder (sort of a strong hereditary mayor of a community) and a dragonrider and finds himself sometimes torn by his dual responsibilities. Because he is younger, this is more of a coming-of-age tale than the previous two. Here again, new characters are added while more familiar ones gain depth as they develop over time. We also see a wider realm as we become much more familiar with the Holds than we have in the first two, which focused more on the dragonweyrs.

The second trilogy, Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums, overlaps the events of the first and is aimed at younger readers, shifting the main focus once more, this time to the young musicians Menolly and Piemur. Again, these are well-written coming-of-age stories and again, we are treated to a broadening view of Pern’s society, as this time we enter the world of the Harper Hall, Pern’s versions of Bards. We also get a much larger introduction to the Master Harper Robinton, who will become one of the most beloved characters of the entire series. Once more, the characters are well-drawn, the storylines are compelling, the world-creation detailed and imaginative.

These first six are easily the strongest of the entire series — in their characterization, their pacing, their plots, their sense of adventure and originality. From here, we start to move downhill, though the trip is uneven, with some sheer drop-offs in quality to sudden rises to bumpy middle-of-the-road quality. What happens after the first six is we start to get prequels and sequels and more overlaps. The problem when one starts to shoehorn in new works into an already fully-created imaginary world is you now have to make sure everything “fits”. So prequels tend to have a feel of being forced into their shape — this has to happen here because in later books this happens, this has to have this name so in later books we can see why that name changed, and so on. This is the major flaw of the prequel books, such as Dragonsdawn. They have their strengths, but they feel so constrained by what must follow from them that they lose the sense of freshness that the original six books have.

The characterization is also not as strong. Better are the books that overlap or come somewhat before or after the original two trilogies but focus on other aspects of the Pern society, people who live neither in the holds or the weyrs, or books that focus on a single adventure in the “history” of Pern, such as the face against a devastating plague earlier in Pern’s history. Because they are less constrained by having to explain the origins of certain customs and so on, they feel much more organic as stories and while they never rise to the level of the first six, they are more compelling and more character driven.

The strongest of the other books are the ones that deal with the Masterharper and that close the time period of the first six books: All the Weyrs of Pern and to a much lesser extent Skies of Pern. The weakest are the last three, two of which are simply awful (including the last one) and a few prequels that felt like we were scraping bottom of the parts of Pern yet to be explored.

Should you read them all? The first six without a doubt. They are truly classic and if anything improve as they go on. And don’t skip the “young adult” dragonsinger trilogy — it’s some of her best writing and in fact I’d say better than the first two books, despite their supposedly younger target audience. Definitely continue chronologically to finish out that series and follow along with The Masterharper, her best character and the one whose scenes are the most moving. Read Moretta’s and Nerilka’s stories for lesser but still enjoyable stand-alone stories.

Fill in the Pern gaps with weaker ones such as Renegades though prepare to be disappointed, and though they are weaker still, you’ll probably be curious enough about how this all started to read Dragonsdawn and the other origin prequels. Dolphins of Pern, Dragonsblood and Dragon’s Fire are the weakest of the whole series and not really essential. Personally I’d advise against reading them, but you might enjoy the occasional snippet of fill-in-your-knowledge-of-Pern info you get now and then.

And some people are just “completists” — having to read everything in a series no matter how bad, how trivial, or how obviously commercial (you know who you are). No matter how bad or middling some of these books are, though, they can’t outweigh the clear strengths of the best in the series. —Bill Capossere

Dragon Harper

To be honest, I don't expect much when I pick up a Pern book anymore. These last few have ranged from middling at best (Dragonsblood) to nearly unreadable (Dragon's Fire). While the eternal optimist in me keeps me reading the series, the realist in me can't help but note just how long it's been since there's been a good book (I'm not asking for the glory of the great ones).

Sadly, Dragon Harper doesn't break that streak. It's not as bad as Dragon's Fire, though that isn't saying much at all, and it's not quite as good as Dragonsblood, which also isn't saying much since that novel was mostly just adequate. Timewise, the book picks up just after the events of Dragon's Kin and Dragon's Fire. Harper apprentice Kindan is having a tough time at Harper Hall — he can't find something he's good at and he and his friends (Verilan and two girls — Nonala and Kelsa) are tormented by the requisite school bully Vaxoram. Kindan eventually challenges Vaxoram to a duel and Vaxoram becomes his servant and then friend. Soon after, Kindan impresses a fire-lizard and at the hatching meets and falls in love with Koriana, daughter of Lord Holder Bemin of Fort Hold (who has Harper "issues" and is no way going to allow his daughter to hook up with one). Then we get the by-now-too-familiar plague sweeping across Pern, killing nearly everyone. Kindan and his young friends frantically search the records to find a cure and then gradually take on even more duties as the adults begin to falter before the plague's onslaught.

Where does one start when detailing all the problems with the book? How about plot? The biggest problem has already been mentioned — we've seen it all before. The plague. The search through records. The sense of urgency. The exhausted survivors trying to save the others. The young apprentice constantly being bullied and having to stand up for himself. Dragons going between. Fire Lizards being impressed. If one can't have originality, then one can hope for the comfort of familiarity. But there's a fine line between familiar and stale and Harper crosses that line. Add in the sketchiness of much of the plotting (almost no sense of what is happening elsewhere, who else is combating this plague and how) and some implausibility tossed in as well, and the book just can't rely on plot to save it.

The same sense of staleness resides in the characters who are at times overly familiar (Kindan has echoes of Piemur) but have none of the spirit or freshness of the characters they are pale shadows of. Some are mere caricatures — the bully and the redeemed bully. And, hearkening back to the major flaws of Dragon's Blood, too many lack a consistent core. A character gloats over another, then less than a page or two later speaks with pride of the same person he was just gloating over. Characters switch moods on utter whims, with no sense of reason. Vaxoram's switch from bully to devoted servant is simply unbelievable, with not even a facade of complexity tossed in. Characters learn to fight with their complete opposite hand in under a week. Try dribbling a basketball with a week's practice in your off hand. Now imagine fencing with it. There's suspension of disbelief, and then there's not even bothering to pretend it's believable. A character gets the smart idea of surgical masks to help contain the killer flu, but then simply waits around for full-fledged masks to be delivered rather than jury-rig something out of all the material at hand (such as the sheets flapping around outside since the laundress is dead). And the list goes on.

There are other issues as well — flat side-characters, clumsy introduction of feminist issues (it's not the raising of the issue, it's the painfully clunky way it is done), the reliance on "timing" once again to solve a problem (with all its attendant questions/ paradoxes), an unnecessary prolog that plays at being coy but is self-evident to any Pern fan and that adds nothing to the plot.

Is there anything good? Actually, yes. While way too familiar, the plague plotline, once it starts going and focuses solely on Kindan's role as healer, is by far the strongest part of the book. The action is tight, focused, well-paced. Characters start to flesh out a bit and one starts to actually care about some of them. It's a sizeable chunk of the book, about a third, and since it comes in the end it means the book leaves a relatively positive taste in your mouth once you finish it — no mean accomplishment after how bad the first two-thirds of the book were. But a third of a book is still just a third of a book. The fact that it comes at the end means the memory of the book is more positive than it has any right to be, but it still doesn't make it a good book.

So I can't recommend this book. Though I fear most Pern fans will read it anyway, hoping against hope and experience — just be forewarned. Anyone who hasn't read the Pern books yet will obviously start with the first ones so it will be long period of enjoyment before they get to the lower quality of the latter books. I envy them their journey and would recommend that current Pern fans can better spend their time retracing their steps in the series rather than continuing forward. I'll let you know how the next one turns out — though I fear we all already know. —Bill Capossere

Dragongirl

The steep fall in the quality of the Pern series can’t be laid solely at the feet of Anne McCaffrey’s son Todd McCaffrey, as Anne’s later books in the series themselves widely varied in quality, ranging from downright bad (a few) to mediocre/adequate (most) to not-great-but-pretty-good (a few). But at least one could kind of justify the existence of most of them, as they wrapped up characters we’d grown to love, or gave us the backstory of how the whole setup began, or kept us in the familiar and beloved setting but gave us new situations. But since Todd began co-writing the books with his mother, and later writing them on his own, it isn’t just the quality of the books that’s questionable but their very reason for being. The simple fact is we’ve seen these types of characters and these specific plots too many times and the books have suffered from a major lack of originality, along with a pretty big drop-off in writing craft (at least in comparison to the first seven or eight).

Those same problems bedevil the most recent Pern book, Dragongirl, which is why I can’t recommend it. In terms of plot, there’s just nothing new here: undermanned dragonfighters urgently fighting thread against the odds, dragons fighting off a plague, use of “timing,” mating flights, a character who can talk to all dragons, a character feeling her way into a position of authority, hatchings and impressions, dragonriders mourning their dead dragon, etc. We’ve seen all of this in nearly every book, and the few issues that don’t arise in every book (plague), we’ve now seen in three or four at least. Do we really need to see any of this again?

Even worse, not only is the book as a whole repetitive within the series, but the individual scenes in the book are maddeningly repetitive within its own limited scope. Multiple scenes with the same conversation about how there aren’t enough dragons, multiple scenes with people doing math to figure out there aren’t enough dragons (yes, math scenes), multiple scenes worrying over the number of eggs in a clutch, discussing records, and so on.

Beyond the issues with unoriginal and repetitive plotting, the writing simply isn’t very good. Scenes seldom feel full enough or smoothly integrated, but instead read like a bunch of mostly perfunctory plot points one after the other.  The book is probably 97 percent dialogue, but the dialogue is far from crisp, compelling or sparkling and too often falls into cliché. The many, many discussions on “timing” just bog the book down — it’s rarely a great idea to have a concept that characters are constantly confused about as a major topic of conversation throughout a book. The prose is adequate at its best moments and just bad at its worst. (It’s best to simply avoid the poetry.) Characters have little depth and most are pale shadows of characters we’ve seen before; to be honest, I simply didn’t care what happened to any of them.

Unfortunately, Dragongirl resolves some matters but leaves others hanging, ending not quite in a cliffhanger but at a point requiring a follow-up book. Personally, I hope it’s the last; it’s well past time to put Pern to rest. —Bill Capossere