Anne McCaffrey Book Page

Dragonflight

McCaffrey's best known series was originally an award-winning short story Weyr Search (collected in The Hugo Winners 1968-1970 edited by Isaac Asimov). In Dragonflight, McCaffrey develops the story, starting with the action that took place in the short and continuing the adventures of Werywoman Lessa.

The sequel to Dragonflight, Dragonquest sees F'lar dealing with the social upheaval caused by the arrival of the Oldtimers, and by the changes that thread is forcing on his people.

Although the natural successor to this book is The White Dragon, if you are reading this series for the first time, read Dragonsong and Dragonsinger next.

Menolly is an embarrassment to her fisher family because she 'twiddles' -- she presumes to create tunes of her own. The story begins with the death of the Sea Hold's harper (Petiron). In the Pern series, harpers teach the young, pass information between the holds, keep the history and the language, and remind the people of laws and traditions through their songs. Unable to face life in the Sea Hold, especially after they deliberately mistreat and injured hand (shades of Johnny Tremaine), Menolly runs away. She adopts, and is adopted by, a fair of fire lizards, the ancient ancestors of the mighty dragons.

Highly recommended as a good read

As Menolly arrives at the harper hall, dragon rider T'gellan tells her she will be settled in a week. This short novel covers that period of time, as Menolly finds her place in the almost exclusively-male harper craft.

One of McCaffrey's shorter novels, Dragonsinger is one of the most satisfying and universal of her stories.

Taking up the story of Lord Jaxom and the white dragon Ruth a few years after the end of Dragonquest, this story has the Pernese learning more about their ancestors, and the technology of those original colonists. Together Jaxom and Ruth foil the machinations of the Oldtimers, and discover the original landing place and township of their ancestors.

The White Dragon runs concurrently with Dragondrums, and whichever one you read first, you may think that the other would have been a better choice. The White Dragon definitely ends at a later time than Dragondrums.

Menolly's friend, the rougish harper apprentice and soprano, Piemur must face the loss of his beautiful voice. While waiting to see if his voice will settle into that of a useful male singer, the master harper (Robinton) decides to use Piemur's natural curiosity and daring in the political work of the harper hall.

Piemur's exploits lead him to stolen fire lizard eggs, and an accidental flight to the great southern continent where he discovers his calling as an explorer.

This story takes place about three years after Dragonsong and Dragonsinger, and concurrent with parts of The White Dragon and The Renegades of Pern.

This is a part of Lessa's prehistory. In the first books, McCaffrey refers to the ballad of Moreta's ride. Here is the story of Moreta. It can be read any time after Dragonflight and Dragonquest without interfering too much with the natural evolution of the series.

The novella Nerilka's Story is best read after this novel as it takes place at that time. My copy is a Bantam edition (1987) with Coelura.

From the first landing to the first dragonriders, this is the story of the original colonists and the changes they made, first to adapt to Pern, and then to the threat of thread.

This story follows logically from The Renegades of Pern, being in essence the story told by Aivas. Although the story of the landing, and predating the adventures of Lessa and F'lar, it is best read in this order. The subtitle on the cover of some copies seems to imply that it is the first story.

An interesting comparison would be to read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars .

This story takes place at the same time as Piemur's adventures in Dragondrums. The Pernese discover the original landing site and computer centre of the colonists, their ancestors. It ends with the artificial intelligence (Aivas) about to begin telling them the beginning of Pern's human history.

This is also the story of Lady Holdless and other renegades whose illegal activities cause havoc. In particular, this novelisation includes the content of the short story The Girl Who Heard Dragons.

This novel takes up the story of Pern after Aivas' telling of the adventures of the original colonists. You have to be willing to accept that a community with very basic technology can be quickly brought to understand and accept computers and space travel.

This is the story of the real fight against Thread, of the final pass of thread. Although thread will continue for some years, the dragonriders' actions off planet will prevent any future passes.

A peculiar, often repeated point that McCaffrey makes during this book is that the Pernese do not wish to learn a technology greater than the original colonists, and Aivas agrees to this. I'm confused, if the Aivas was their computer, and the receptacle of all their contemporary knowledge, arts and crafts, technology, history and so on, how could it be more technologically advanced than the humans of its time?

The ending is also somewhat strange, did McCaffrey write herself into a corner with the Aivas storyline? Make sure you have a handkerchief with you for the final chapters.

This is a collection of stories that take place in the time of the original colonists and the earliest generations following them. One of the things McCaffrey does is to mention songs and stories and place names and then double back and write the adventures to which they refer.

The collection includes a dolphineer story.

Published as Red Star Rising in the U.K..

We pulled this cover image down from Amazon.com, but have no further information about this novel except where Anne M. places it in her chronology.

The hero of this book (if you discount the dolphins) is Readis, the son of Aramina (The Girl Who Heard Dragons), who we meet in Dragondrums and The Renegades of Pern. On Pern, the fact that metasynthed dolphins were also intelligent colonists of Pern, brought to work with the humans, had been forgotten. In the early tales they were still called 'Shipfish', and were known to rescue sailors from the sea. Now events are coming to a point where the old dolphineer craft will be revived.

This can also be considered a sequel to the short story The Smallest Dragon Boy, which introduced K'van. The story appears in McCaffrey's collection Get Off the Unicorn.

Considering how often McCaffrey returns to her universe for concurrent stories, it is disappointing that revisiting events is her weakness. She tends to write like someone who is retelling a story for the thousandth time, and not enjoying it. An author who does this well, is Joan D. Vinge in her Tiamat series.

This is the early life of Masterharper Robinton. Not only has she revisited earlier material, she has also reinvented it, changing history, for example, a previous hero Petiron, Robinton's father, is now a jealous tyrant. The events were loudly telegraphed, and there is a strong feeling throughout the book that it's all rough ground to be got over as lightly as possible.

The story ends with the tale of Lessa being searched in Dragonflight, which might be nicely cyclic, except that it all seems a terrible and unnecessary reach. It is in part a response to online interraction with fans at the Del Rey web site.

It all goes to prove that you may be declared dead, but it aint over 'til the dragonlady sings...