I’ve long been aware of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books, if only on a superficial level—fantasy, dragons, getting a bit old but supposed to be good; that sort of an idea. While on the lookout for more cozy fiction in our local library, I randomly ran into Dragonflight, the first Pern novel, and decided to finally give it a go.

And before I get into my review: Spoiler warnings in effect! Also, a heads-up on one f-bomb.

It was interesting. No, truly—not the “interesting” interesting, the faux compliment or empty-nothings-version of polite interesting. Really, truly interesting. And it does feel somewhat old. (Published in 1968, so not as old as The Lord of the Rings, to put it into my own SFFnal context).

Humans settled the third planet in the Rukbat solar system and called it Pern. Contact with Earth was broken, however: after two generations, Rukbat’s stray planet (which follows a wildly erratic orbit) came close enough that deadly spores crossed over to Pern and dropped from the sky with devastating losses, not just among the settlers but native Pernese life as well—only solid rock and metal proved impervious.

To burn these devastating silvery threads from the air before they had a chance to land, men and women with high empathy and rudimentary telepathic ability were trained to work with “dragons” bred from indigenous life forms that resembled their mythical Terran namesakes. The process took generations, and a complex, stratified society with tithing responsibility was created to feed and equip the dragonriders while they focused on defence and training in their unfertile mountaintop abodes known as Weyrs.

Each time the stray planet—also known as the Red Star—passes close enough, the Threads fall for a period of 50 years. Then the wanderer swings far enough away and at least another 200 years (sometimes 400 due to the erratic orbit) go by in peace, which is long enough for the rest of the populace to forget and start resenting the tithes and scorning the dragonmen until the next 50-year Pass comes along.

The two main characters are Lessa of Ruatha Hold and dragonrider F’lar of Benden Weyr. We first encounter Lessa as a ragged kitchen girl who survived by serving those who betrayed her family and took over their lands. F’lar offers her a chance to impress a golden dragon, a future queen dragon, with whom she will share a telepathic bond, and to become a Weyrwoman, a co-leader of a Weyr, possibly with F’lar himself.

Over the couple of years it takes for her queen Ramoth to mature, Lessa learns more about the civilization on Pern, the ballads, the teachings, and what it means to be Weyrwoman. The major problem Benden Weyr faces is that another Pass is impending, but there are not enough dragons to protect all of Pern, for currently only one Weyr out of six remains populated; why dragonriders in the others disappeared hundreds of years ago is not known.

The setting falls into fantasy despite the science-fictional premise, but some details deviate from “pure” medieval-European-based fantasy. For instance, the dragons are able to breathe fire after chewing (fueling up on) a native rock called firestone; dragonriders use this ability to destroy as many Threads as possible while they are still falling. Dragons can also travel instantly from one place to another, or one time to another. Furthermore, all dragons are able to converse telepathically and willing to pass on messages from human to human. Finally, crafters (which I wish were talked about more) end up re-inventing flamethrowers to destroy spores that made it to ground.

The structure differs quite a bit from the typical structure of current fantasy novels. The book is divided into four sections that at times felt like they would’ve worked better as individual short stories. Apparently Dragonflight is actually two novellas squished together to make a novel, so that probably explains this tangle.

There were also confusing things. For example, some events span many Turns (the Pernese year) in a very short span of pages and this isn’t very clearly remarked upon. Somewhat annoying was the s’elling of d’agonrider n’mes w’th an a’ostrophe. There is a story-internal reason, but it’s only vaguely referred to.

Moreover, it was frustrating to me that Lessa kept leaping to conclusions and acting without thought; I would’ve liked to see more character development. The description of the society also remains rather narrow, since the POV characters are almost solely Lessa and F’lar. This feels to me like a deliberate choice by the author, not a flaw due to lack of skill, but your mileage may vary.

Some of the more disgusting details include F’lar’s tendency to call Lessa merely “the girl” and to grab and shake her, and yet he cannot fathom why she at times resents him. Hello, dude, could there possibly be a reason…?!? This might be a character development choice, but it never paid off, IMO. Also, during Ramoth’s first mating flight (with Flair’s dragon Mnementh), Lessa was pressured to stay in telepathic contact with her dragon to take advantage of the surge of sexual desire and to essentially manipulate a pairing of Lessa and F’lar, like their dragons.

Browsing reviews, it’s pretty clear that Dragonflight (and likely the rest of the Pern series) has a particular audience that cares deeply for McCaffrey’s approach and worldbuilding; the rest don’t. I can see why many people liked it, and I can also see why many people disliked it.

I saw one reviewer complain that the main problem was solved “easy peasy because of time travel”. I’d say that’s missing the point; to me the focus isn’t how the lack of dragonriders was solved. Instead, the author concentrates on the attempts to get there. How to find the right people and put them in places where they can be most effective. Convincing others, the necessary political maneuverings, discussing possible strategies, etc., to try and wrangle out a solution to a deadly dilemma given these particular constraints. A kind of council of Elrond, if you like, but as a novel.

I found Dragonflight engaging enough that I started reading the sequel, Dragonquest. However, I soon found I didn’t have the motivation to continue the same kind of people-wrangling, when a lot of the interpersonal relations were antagonistic (I do like my stories with a heaping of Learning to Work Together), and especially because F’lar still fucking cannot stop shaking Lessa. I’ll be better off spending my reading time elsewhere, now that the novelty has worn off.

Image by Eppu Jensen

ICBIHRTB—pronounced ICK-bert-bee—is short for ‘I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read This Before’. It features book classics that have for some reason escaped our notice thus far.