Dragonflight

I was nervous to re-read this book.

See here's the thing: Once upon a time, I was thirteen and perfectly willing to read any book with a dragon on the cover. My Dad had (and I assume still has) a large collection of McCaffrey's works and I plowed through them during my formative years as a reader. I don't remember them too well, but I remember a series of female heroines kicking ass and riding dragons. I was nervous to go back and look at these books with grown-up eyes, and some of those fears were founded.

In a lot of ways, this book and Pern in general are popcorn to my fantasy-loving heart. They have all the tropes 13-year old Valerie devoured. You've got a clever heroine constantly kept down by The Man, you've got attacking sci-fi Thread things, you've got massively confusing time travel arcs, and DRAGONS! FREAKING AWESOME TELEPATHIC DRAGONS. Reading it was like sinking into an armchair so ancient it's permanently molded to your body. When I settled back to just enjoy the dragons, I had a lovely time.

I still love Pern. I love the concept of colonizing a Dragonworld, and the Threads remain a unique antagonist in the genre. I like the complexity of Pern's politics, even within the Weyr, and the different personalities and roles for dragonkind. It's a wonderful world to revisit and her skill with settings is my absolute favorite part of McCaffrey's books.

Lessa was more of a problem for grown-up me. She keeps secrets in not-smart ways. She gets annoyed with people for not telling her things when really she could think her plans through for herself. She's a bit too 60s Strong Female Character for me to really enjoy. However, when I step back and think about McCaffrey's perspective, I see a stronger allegory that makes me more forgiving of Lessa's character. The whole concept of “Queens don't fly. Because.” echoes from all the modern male characters, and it takes the Thread battle to find out Queens actually fly quite well if you stop tying them down. Lessa is tamed as much as Ramoth by her time period telling her she should be barefoot in the Weyrkitchen. She tries to do something about it, but she's often ineffective because she's denied information. This is the cause of all her recklessness, and only a kind author makes sure she comes through her spontaneous schemes all right. I don't like Lessa much, but I think she's a character very reflective of the novel's themes.

Speaking of themes, it always shocks me to reread my favorite middle school books and discover they were filled with sex. Did I just ignore those chapters as a kid? I must have. The sex in this book, particularly F'lar's relationship with Lessa, makes me deeply uncomfortable, though. The idea that they are a couple because their dragons mate and neither of them really gets a say in the matter is unsettling. Still, I could roll with that and a relationship growing out of it if F'lar didn't essentially admit to raping Lessa when they weren't dragon-linked. Yet she never seems more the coquettishly annoyed with him, and accepts their relationship as part of her duties. I don't remember this part, and it put a definite damper on my enjoying the novel. It's mostly glossed over, and we're left to infer most of their feelings, but I found their relationship even more confusing than the time travel.

I'm not going to go into the time travel. It always hurts my head, but I enjoy it anyway.

I can't say I love it as much at 30 as I did at 13, but I can say that it was still thought-provoking all these years later. Also, telepathic dragons are always awesome.

I read this because long ago I read Dragonsdawn and I liked it. Plus this is a classic of the genre.

Overall it was pretty good but I can't say great. Parts of the story and extremely predictable and the writing style is a bit older but not too distracting.

The main male character shaking the main female character when she gets “hysterical” turned me off some.

It does establish the world well, and I will be trying the next one.

I took this review from a 5-star to a 4-star in my rereading. It's Dragonflight still an excellent book? Yes. But perhaps I read now with more of a critical eye than I did almost 20 years ago.

The Chronicles of Pern contain some of the most believable and relatable dragons in fantasy, and they're truly the mold from which other dragons in the genre are cut. However, I find my issues now revolve around the human characters in the story.

Lessa and F'lar, specifically, seem pulled from a YA novel of today. This isn't really meant to be a YA book, of course. But Lessa's incessant need to prove herself (and to whom, exactly? She was chosen) and F'lar's incessant need to... well, shake Lessa, grew tiresome (and even became a point of humor towards the end of the book, so many this was intended).

It's a book very much of it's time. It can also err on the side of the cheesy:

Mother of us all, he was glad that now, of all times conceivable, he, F'lar, rider of bronze Mnementh, was a dragonman of Pern!

The best part of the book, in my opinion, is the way McCaffrey deals with time travel. It's never an easy topic to deal with, but the entire setup comes together perfectly at the end of the tale.

Well, this was certainly enjoyable, but not without its faults. When your society is almost more sexist than Westeros, you've got some problems. As it is, I do like how some of the characters are written, particularly the Master Smith towards the end of the book (who acts exactly like an engineer).

I also have a bit of a gripe with how quickly the Dragon Riders manage to cope with four-dimensional thinking. It seems slightly absurd.

As I did not particularly care for this book, I'm forgoing the usual format and just writing a quick review. I read this book as the April pick for Sword & Laser. I was vaguely aware of it being considered one of the “classics” of fantasy. It hadn't really been on my radar as something I wanted to read.

In fact I had this feeling (based partially on discussing it with a friend who just read it for the first time recently) that I wasn't going to like it, so I borrowed it from the library rather than just buying it like I normally would. Maybe I was setting myself up to dislike it. Either way I'm glad I didn't buy it.

I didn't connect to a single human character in the entire book. I found them all to be pretty awful people that I wouldn't want to be around.

The only redeeming part of this book to me were the dragons. I think they were well done, and interesting/likable (for dragons). Maybe I'm not being forgiving to the fact the dragonriders themselves are just as arrogant as the dragons they ride.

Overall I found the plot lacking too. It seemed to jump all over the place, and when it finally came time to battle the “threads” that threatened Pern, it jumped off again (time travel: go!), then ended rather abruptly. Now I know there are more books, but I can't say I'm really itching to read them.

I will say I found the last third or so of the book much better than the first two-thirds, so really this is maybe a 2.5 for me rather than just a flat 2, but I couldn't give it a 3 after spending so much time looking for excuses not to read it. If it hadn't been a club pick and so short, I might have considered dropping it all together.

Maybe this is a book I would have enjoyed as a kid, but it's hard for me to say.

This is my third attempt reading it, and only on this attempt did I actually understand the setting and what the characters were meant to be, in relation to it. I'm pleased that I managed to finish it this time. For the most part, it was an all-right read. For me, a pro of this one in comparison to something like Wizard of Earthsea, is that there's more description about the world, including a codex and notes and what have you, and that McCaffrey's writing flows a bit better. Things keep moving, and you're actually in a lot of the action. A con for me, a major drawback, was that it wasn't clear enough? I don't know if it's that there wasn't enough detail or I just wasn't paying attention, but it was a jerky start getting into the world. Both of the main characters also suffered from a severe arrogance trip, and it could've afforded more backstory to make them more likeable. However, I will also be continuing this series, and seeing what changes as it goes along.

This book is so gross, completely lacking in substance, and utilizes time travel in the laziest way (not to mention it introduces a few glaring plot holes). I can't get on board with the outrageous level of accepted misogyny, manipulation, controlling behavior, and rape that happens. The author attempts to set Lessa apart and show that she's “not like other girls” by showing that every other woman in the world is ugly, smelly, stupid, incompetent, etc. in some way. It's lazy and horrible. Other than that, the world building really isn't there, and most of the book is sitting in meetings or in a cavern talking about what's going to happen without anything happening.

I feel like I should have liked this book way more than I actually did. It could have been a few factors, such as the copy I was reading was so yellow and brittle I sneezed when I turned a page. It could have been the names. I really dislike when all of the characters have unique names that ALL start with the same letter and I can't keep them straight (Fax, F'Lar, etc). What I LOVED about the book was the dragonology. Seriously, when the dragons were “talking” the humor came out and I couldn't turn pages fast enough. I liked Lessa too, despite the fact that she is really devoid of personality except to piss F'lar off. And so much politics! I think this may be the real drag for me in High Fantasy. So many council meetings. Yawn. So, overall, I thought it kind of failed as a romance, failed as a riveting adventure story, succeeded in being unlike anything I've ever read before, and didn't convince me to read 19 more volumes.

This book was my introduction to pern. Honestly, it didn't do that good of a job; I doubt I will ever be back. The story wasn't captivating, the characters[return]were poorly developed, the dragons were developed even less, and the whole thing couldn't decide what sort of atmosphere it wanted to settle on. I'm guessing[return]the author intended the dragons to be wonderful and loyal companions, but for me they held a near constant air of vaguely creepy mind-controlling symbiosis.[return]Needless to say, this broke the story for me. If what you're looking for is strong and well done companion characters, I recommend Mercedes Lacky highly[return]to you; she may not have been first, but she knows what to do with characters and how to develop feeling in the reader.

About halfway through, the book about dragons introduces time travel. McCaffrey is clearly trying to blend sci-fi and fantasy, a noble effort, but in this case it just falls flat on it's face. It has some great pieces, but the time travel plot is so distracting that I can't enjoy the rest of the book.

Also, the plot relies on a bit of orbital physics (another attempt to mix the sci-fi into this book), but it gets it wrong. A planet with an extremely eccentric orbit would travel at about the same speed when close to a planet with a much more circular orbit, which would mean that a close pass of the two planets might last a couple orbits of the planet with a circular orbit, but not fifty. Maybe a personal niggle, but if you're going to base a major part of the plot around this, check to make sure it's right.