50 Book Challenge, Book #13 - Dragongirl by Todd McCaffrey

Don't really have much to add about this one that I didn't already talk about in the previous entry, Dragonheart. We're still with Fiona, who through a rather huge tragedy (and one that I actually thought was kinda interesting), is now Weyrwoman at Telgar Weyr. So we go through life at Telgar, fighting thread with all of Pern understrength, lots of injuries, more thread fighting, an ending that was kinda ehn... and I dunno, just not a lot of action really even though there was supposedly a lot of action going on.

This book does delve rather heavily into Fiona's unorthodox, polyamorous relationship between herself, her Weyrleader T'mar (the rider who's bronze dragon flew Fiona's queen), Kindan (a harper who McCaffrey uses as a main character in other books) and Kindan's partner, Lorana. This is all fine and dandy as it's always been established that relationships in Weyrs tended to be more flexible as riders would take different mates based on who their dragons were flown by. But this 4 way relationship felt awfully forced. I actually had no problem seeing the bond between Fiona, T'mar and Lorana, but with Kindan it was like, oh ok so Fiona's had a crush on his as a child, and he was in love with her older sister who died during the Plague, but now that Fiona's older and is a Weyrwoman and kinda awesome... OF COURSE Kindan should just love her too... Ah yeah... could I have some causality here please? It just really didn't work for me.

So yeah, I'm done with the Todd McCaffrey version of Pern. It just lacks for a lot unfortunately.

50 Book Challenge #12: Dragonheart by Todd McCaffrey

It was early highschool when I was introduced to the first 3 of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books. I loved them. Pern quickly became my other favourite imaginary land, beside Narnia and Middle Earth. I kept with the series despite what I felt was diminishing returns, and when McCaffrey passed away earlier this year, I honestly mourned.

Her son, Todd, has picked up his mother's creation and is attempting to carry on. This, Dragonheart, is I believe the first of his solo books, the others written in conjunction with his mother.

Dragonheart is... not very good. I appreciate that Todd is carving out a time of his own in Pernese history; the Third Pass of Threads, thus avoiding the origins of Pern, Moreta (6th Pass) and of course F'lar and Lessa and their co-horts of the 9th Pass. He's trying to build his own stable of characters and difficulties, but unfortunately, there's not a lot of originality in a lot of his ideas.

We have a holder Plague in the series of books he wrote with his mother (an idea we already saw in Moreta), and now in his solo books, he unleashes what looks like a superflu against the dragons this time. This book deals specifically with a group of riders going back in time to an abandoned weyr to mature a couple of clutches, and to give injured dragonriders time to heal. Kinda been there done that too when F'nor is sent back with a wing and an immature queen dragon to breed some more beasts for severley undermanned Benden Weyr.

The characters are ok... but nothing special. McCaffrey doesn't have to worry about a lot of world building since his mother's already done that, so his overly detailed description of the running of a Weyr is a little... dull. His mother did great action scenes; world changing duels, Thread fighting, the exhilerating dragon flights... Todd just doesn't have his mother's craft, no matter how hard he tries.

All that being said, I will probably read the continuation of this story... and then, sad as it seems, I doubt I'll be continuing on with new adventures in Pern, I'll just periodically revisit the old ones.
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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.