As another joint venture between Anne McCaffery and her son that brings more light to the world of Pern. ( )

(review two books in one - but they're really one book from two perspectives)
Ok, that's it. I'm done reading new Pern books. My lord! These books - Fire more than Kin, but both - were very obviously written in chunks and then stuck together, and nobody did a readthrough afterward to check continuity or sense. And since I create a universe inside my head when I read, that sort of thing drives me MAD. For instance, in an early chapter in Fire, Pellar is up in arms about Kindan being Master Zist's apprentice because HE's Zist's apprentice, and Master Zist says well, I can have two but normally the elder is jumped to Journeyman. Thinks a bit, then says OK, I'm raising you to journeyman (even though you're young for it), barring a few classes back at Harper Hall. Ok. So Pellar is a journeyman now. Much later in the book, he's intercepted by a dragonrider, collected and brought back to the minehold - and also given a suit of Harper blue, the proper _apprentice_ clothes. The dragonrider is worried he's mad about missing the proper ceremonies, but he's perfectly happy - now he's a proper Harper Apprentice! What? Now wait a minute.... There are a lot of things like that. And the solution to the problem became obvious several chapters before anybody in the book figured it out...it's the wrong kind of firestone. Now I knew that because it hurt the dragons to flame (and storage chambers tended to blow up)...do you mean that dragons just accepted that suddenly firestone hurt, when it hadn't before? There wasn't any crisis at the end of the Second Fall, they didn't lose dragons in any numbers...Todd does like to present enormous complications and solve them in enormously complicated ways. Kin was the first book, and it's pretty good. Some continuity errors, but not many, and only a few things that don't fit what I know of Pern. Dragonsblood, the second book, was just stupid - a disease of dragons that required cross-timing it over thousands of years to solve? Firelizards _accidentally_ doing that back-time trip? Bleah bleah blah. Fire is less bad than Blood but much worse than Kin, and they're all much worse than any of the real Pern books - well, Kin might be as good as MasterHarper or Skies, but I hate those anyway. Dragonriders trilogy, Harper Hall trilogy, Moreta & Nerilka, Dragonsdawn & Chronicles, Dolphins are very good. Renegades is necessary to set up Dolphins. Dragonseye is OK but has a blatant continuity error that annoys me every time I read it (AIVAS did _not_ shut itself off before Second Fall because people were being dependent on it!). Weyrs is...um. Actually I can't remember the story of Weyrs.
I like Pern, can you tell? And because I like it, I feel protective and possessive. I was in a Pern fanfic group for a while - there were a lot of stupid stories written and a few good ones, and I liked most of them much more than Todd's stuff. Sorry, I think Anne should let Pern die rather than drag it out in new and ugly directions. ( )

Not the best Pern book, but still quite enjoyable. ( )

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless they were an obsessive Pern completer (like me!).

Good idea for a Pern plot, interesting (if under developed) characters, and nice cross over with already existing books. Unfortunately, something seems to be missing. I can't tell if something was taken out, if passages were rearranged but not edited to fit together correctly, or if the book is simply written in a disjointed fashion, but the flow of people and places doesn't always match up. It's very distracting; I had to decide to ignore it and keep reading. The tale is also anti-climactic; the coming together of plot lines is very heavy handed, the solution to everyone's problems literally falls all over the main character, and then the book takes a sharp turn and someone suddenly gets made a Dragonrider *almost* out of the blue (except that you saw it's forced inevitability coming 200 pages ago). Reading, it felt as if the McCaffrey clan had too many ideas and too many characters, and didn't bother with deciding which ideas and characters would make the *best* book. ( )

Anne McCaffrey's World of Pern, viewed from a different time and a different angle by her son Todd McCaffrey.
There are holders, crafters and dragonriders but there are also people not included in society, they are the Shunned. The shunned are criminals banned from hold or hall for their crimes. it is the Capital punishment for all deviants. but what about their family? with the Shunned, their families come with them. the children suffer from famine and disease.
Harpers Hall wants to get to the bottom of this. These Shunned keep growing and they might do something desperate.
Although the threat of deadly Thread is still 16 turns away, the Firestone mines explode and there are none left. They need 40 tons per dragon per Weyr in order to fight Thread successfully. With firestone being so volatile, not even the shunned wants to work in the mines. Some of them are getting ideas about the stone.
It's a must collect book for Dragonrider fans. I never really thought about the Shunned or the miners or the Wher-handlers until Todd wrote about them. It's a classic Dragonrider book with the focus NOT on the dragonriders.

http://mermaidarium.blogspot.com/2007... ( )