Number 17 is Dragon Harper by Anne McCaffery and her son Todd McCaffery. I've been reading the Dragonrider of Pern novels since I was about 14 years old. My father's friend Ray gifted me a box set of the first three novels (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, The White Dragon) for Christmas, and I've loved them ever since, reading my original copies into near tatters. Later, for my 27th birthday, a friend of mine gave me, for my birthday, a trade paperback, collected edition of those books, signed by McCaffery herself. I was touched. I actually haven't read all of the books done under the Dragonriders of Pern aegis; their quality has fallen off some over the years, and well, my first love will always be for the main characters of those first novels (Lessa, F'lar, Robinton etc.) and none of the characters introduced after that (such as the those in the Harper Hall trilogy) have interested me as much, although I did like the tale of Moreta quite a bit.

Anne McCaffery hasn't written as much in recent years, and as of late, it has been her son Todd who has taken over some of the chores (following in Christopher Tolkien's steps as administrator of his famous parent's literary wealth?). Dragon Harper is Todd's fourth book and its... ok really. It was a quick read overall, taking me about half a day's reading, entertaining enough, but definitely not as resonating to me as his mother's earlier works. I think I didn't like this one as much because the plot seemed to me to bit of a rehash of the plot of Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern in that it deals with a Pern-wide influenza pandemic. The only real difference here is that instead of seeing the pandemic mainly from the Weyr's point of view (as in Moreta), we are seeing it mainly from Hold and Harper Hall's pov, throught the eyes of young apprentice harper Kindan. He's a likeable enough character, slightly more mature for his age than he probably should be, but in Pernese society, I"ve often thought that people seem to mature much faster (Pernese society is not quite medieval in structure and thinking, but its not far off either).

The Weyrs and dragonriders are almost absent in this book, as they cannot risk themselves and their dragons so close to a time when Threadfall will once again happen (the next Pass scheduled to begin in a scant 12 years). This story takes place nearly 500 years after Pern was colonized (a story detailed in Dragondawn), and as always, I do find the slight differences interesting. Some information is known at this time (ie that they WERE colonized), fire-lizards are known and common, as is the practice of timing it (where dragons and their riders can time travel into the past). These things are unknown by the time we get to the original trilogy. But overall, Pernese society hasn't really changed much in the thousands of years between Pern's colonization and the events Lessa and F'lar live through in Dragonflight. While this is probably not very realistic (would society really remain that stagnat?), it is rather comforting; I want to read my Pernese stories as recognizable Pern stories with heroes and dragons and whatnot. A Pern story wouldn't be a Pern story if there's all of a sudden cities and non-dragon powered flight; that's not what I signed up for.

So, Dragonharper isn't spectacular, but its still not a bad sojourn back to one of my favourite worlds.