Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey

   1968; 286 pages.  Book 1 (out of 25) in the “Dragonriders of Pern” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Time Travel; Epic Fantasy; Dragons.  Overall Rating: 7*/10.

 

    The dragonriders are coming!  They’re on an official Weyr Search, so quick, hide the women of the village!

 

    Well, maybe show the riders a couple of the older ones, so they don’t get suspicious that Ruath Hold isn't holding out on them.  After all, they do have a right to be on this hunt.  A new queen dragon is about to be hatched and a suitable maiden must be found to form a lifelong bond with the royal beast.

 

    Lessa isn’t worried.  She’s already in hiding, disguised as a lowly serving girl, and the sole survivor of the former ruling family of Ruath Hold which was wiped out by its current overlord, Fax.  She has sworn vengeance, and is biding her time, making plans on how to kill Fax.

 

    Lessa views this Weyr Search as a golden opportunity.  The dragonriders are heavily armed and any one of them just needs to be manipulated into challenging Fax to duel to the death.  Their leader, F’lar, must most certainly be the best swordsman in the group.

 

    And he seems dimwitted enough to be easily maneuvered into challenging Fax to a fight.

 

What’s To Like...

    Dragonflight is the first book Anne McCaffrey’s signature science-fantasy series “Pern”.  The series is actually a family project: Books 1-16 were written by Anne, books 17-24 were written either by her son Todd alone or in collaboration with her, and Book 25 was written by Anne's daughter Gigi.

 

    F’lar and Lessa share the spotlight as the two human protagonists, but their dragons, Mnementh and Ramoth, get equal billing.  The main storyline concerns the possible return of the “Threads”, a kind of concentrated acid-rain phenomenon that might be real or legend.  Subplots include the strained relationship between the elite (who live in the Weyrs) and the commoners (who live in the Holds), the depletion of the dragon ranks, and of course, F’lar’s and Lessa’s relationship.

 

    I liked that all the characters are gray.  Lessa is manipulative and aspires to be a killer.  For F’lar, duty trumps ethics.  And although the lords of the Holds may be disloyal to the Weyrs, their discontent stems from a valid point:  why do they have to pay tithes of grain and livestock for the protection of the dragons against a threat that hasn't been seen in ages?

 

    The world-building is fantastic.  There’s a short introduction at the beginning of the book, giving the backstory of Pern.  Book One apparently takes place in the future and is the result of a Terran colonization effort abandoned by the home planet after Pern was almost entirely wiped out by the Threads.  Fire-spewing dragons and fire-lizards were developed be the surviving Pernese to counter the destruction wrought by the Threads, with limited success.  Pern ekes by, due more to the Threads going away than to the eradication program.

 

    The book is divided into four parts.  There are no chapters, but Anne McCaffrey inserts a short poem each time a new sub-section begins.  There’s a “Dragondex” in the back; bookmark it; you’ll be referencing it a lot.  There are zero cusswords in the text; instead, made-up cussing is used: “in the name of the Egg”, ”by the First Egg”, “by the Void that Spawned us”, etc.  I wish more sci-fi/fantasy writers did this.

 

    There’s not much magic—at one point Lessa casts a “Blurring” spell, but that’s about it.  There is a couple instances of using chemistry, which is always a treat since I’m a chemist.  Here it involves things like “black heavy-water” and a substance called “Agenothree” which is revealed in the Dragondex to be nitric acid.  The dragons are telepathic, which I thought was a neat twist.  They communicate mentally with each other, as well as whatever human they are bonded to.  Oh yeah, if you like sci-fi books with time-travel in them, you’ll love Dragonflight.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 7,060 ratings and 909 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.45*/5, based on 36,056 ratings and 169 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Captious (adj.) : tending to find fault or raise petty objections.

Others: Disinter (v.).

 

Excerpts...

    “Well, isn’t it possible that our conviction about the imminence of the Threads could stem from one of us coming back when the Threads are actually falling?  I mean . . .”

    “My dear girl, we have both analyzed every stray thought and action—even your dream this morning upset you, although it was no doubt due to all the wine you drank last night—until we wouldn’t know an honest presentiment if it walked up and slapped us in the face.”  (loc. 2896)

 

    “I don’t need to be reminded of Moreta right now,” F’lar growled, bending to the maps.  “She could talk to any dragon in the Weyrs.”

    “But I can do that!” Lessa protested.

    Slowly, as if he didn’t quite credit his ears, F’lar turned back to Lessa.  “What did you just say?”

    “I said I can talk to any dragon in the Weyr.”

    Still staring at her, blinking in utter astonishment, F’lar sank down to the table top.

    “How long,” he managed to say, “have you had this particular skill?”

    Something in his tone, in his manner, caused Lessa to flush and stammer like an erring weyrling.  (loc. 2931)

 

Kindle Details…

    Dragonflight will cost you $3.99 at Amazon right now.  The rest of the 25-book series range in cost from $5.99 to $9.99, except for Books 3,4, and 6, which for some unfathomable reason are not available in Kindle format.

 

“If a queen isn’t meant to fly, why does she have wings?”  (loc. 1304)

    There are some quibbles.  A map is included, but it spans across two pages, which means the East-West midpoint area is impossible to read because of the book's crease.  The e-book version, which doesn’t have a crease, suffers from this as well; apparently the map pages were just photocopied for insertion into the e-book version.  Also, the choice of font to write the place names is also not very reader-friendly.

 

    The mass market paperback version, published by Del Rey, had a few typos: ot/to, slaming/slamming, etc.  I read the first 25% of Dragonflight in this format, then switched to Kindle, and was happy to find all the typos had been corrected.

 

     The biggest issue was the ending.  Things build toward an anticipated climax, but just as we reach the climax. the book closes.  It's at a logical spot, but it's devoid of any action.  Even though it's a foregone conclusion as to what happens next, the book doesn’t bother to confirm this.  It’s as if the whole purpose of the book was to just introduce the reader to the world of Pern.

 

    Still, I found Dragonflight to be a decent read, and I have two more books from the series on my Kindle, including the sequel, Dragonquest.

 

    7 Stars.  Wikipedia indicates Dragonflight is, for the most part, a blending together of two Pern novellas from 1967, Weyr Search and Dragonrider, and originally published in the sci-fi magazine Analog.  Combining several shorter tales to make a full-length novel can be clunky, and perhaps that’s why the ending is weak.