Dragon's Code: Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern

When Todd started writing with his mom, I was cautiously optimistic. I grew up on Pern, loved Pern, and re-read the series every couple years. I knew Anne was aging, and I was hopeful that Todd, having grown up with her and writing with her, would be able to take over and continue to tell stories in a world I loved. Like I said, I was optimistic. Right up until I read the first few books. Todd made radical changes to the canon, used the same repetitive plots over and over, and wrote the flattest, most Mary Sue-ish characters in the series.

Now I realize I was perhaps too hard on Todd. Gigi is by far the weaker of the two and Anne made do with what she had.

Todd played pretty much in his own timeline, picking a pass that wasn't used in show more his mother's stories. This gave him a lot of freedom while writing - freedom to make his own characters, plots, small adjustments to geography, etc. I thought that was respectful of his mother's creation. Don't get me wrong - he still fucked up canon in ways that didn't make sense (as opposed to the small errs that Anne made, which were largely typos in dragon names or colors), but it was at least temporally isolated from the rest of Pern.

Gigi just dives into some of the most popular, most well-established and well-loved characters of the series to reprise one of the biggest stories in the series. Its a super ballsy move that would take a lot of knowledge and skill to pull off, and Gigi, sadly, does not have either. There's multiple small issues with the canon. For example, Gigi seems to mistake the Terran horses for the Pandoran direhorse. Horses have 4 legs, not 6.

But I can almost, almost ignore those. Like I said, Anne made small typos too. Here, Gigi is writing about Piemur, Sebell, Menolly, and Robinton. None of their personality is captured. The dialogue is stilted and without any character voice (plenty of painful fake accents, though). There is no plot to speak of and what little plot there is is recycled from other Pern books and underdeveloped. Oh no, the dragons are sick again, oh wait here's a convenient, ancient cure. Oh no, we don't have enough dragons to fight Thread oh wait we convinced some to do a time jump. Todd overused these plots to death and Gigi appears to follow the trend.

Piemur lacks any real agency - he just wanders place to place as he's told reporting information people either already knew or don't care about. His biggest contribution is a half-page speech at the end that was painfully cliched and the resulting success doesn't feel earned.

At this point I think I'm done hoping that Pern will continue. Anne gave us over a dozen solid Pern stories. We should be content with that.

TL;DR: This is the Pern equivalent of Star Wars prequels, or the Twilight book Life and Death - a story that could be told, but didn't need to be told, wasn't told well, and contributed nothing to the established story/setting. show less

Really annoying. If I had never read Pern, or if I had read it long ago and forgotten about it, this would be quite a good book - it's events in and around those depicted in The White Dragon, what Piemur and others were doing during all the upset about the queen egg. But, like Todd, Gigi has apparently _not_ read Pern, or doesn't remember basic stuff. Runnerbeasts are _horses_ - they don't have six legs. I don't recall Menolly ever calling Piemur Pie, as she does constantly here - and if I recall properly, he called her Nolly now and then, but never Loll or Lolly. And one major timeline screwup - a single scene, a discussion with Sebell, in which Piemur says "...now that I've settled into my adult voice...". Except that it's a show more flashback, and the beginning of the scene set the talk _before_ he'd accepted his new voice. None of my peeves are major - but they're quite enough to spoil the story, for me. I'm not sure whether Gigi's book is better or worse than Todd's work - his have bigger screwups, where important portions of the plot and setting aren't true to Pern. Hers fits better into Pern - her screwups are more minor - but her story is also minor, a fleshing-out of an established story. I wish one or both of them would write about an earlier Pass, or even an earlier Interval, or a later one - let them create new characters in new settings, rather than tying Pern so strongly to the Ninth Pass. Anne had those characters and that setting, and she had them well. Let others go elsewhere - there's plenty of time and space on Pern for them to do their own work. But if they don't know the basics, that won't work either. As usual, when reading a Pern book that's not by Anne (and admittedly, a few by her as well), I'm left fuming. I don't think I'll read any more. show less

Dragons continue!

Seamless was the word that occurred to me. An avid reader of McCaffrey from when Dragonflight burst onto the scene I was so surprised and delighted by another Pern story told from the perspective of the once singer Piemur. His readjustment to life with the changes to his voice, his disappointments and quest to find a different place within the dragon halls form the background from which the action springs.
The time is in the now but the challenges face date back to the oldtimers living on the Southern continent. A situation is set in motion that could have dragon fighting dragon. Plots are hatched that arise from old situations.
We meet old friends and come more into step with the most recent characters and their doings show more on Pern. Masterharpers, singers, dragon riders are all represented.
Gigi McCaffrey has certainly echoes the voices of Pern without a hitch.
A pleasurable homecoming indeed!

A NetGalley ARC show less

A frustrating read. As a standalone novel, the book works okay. But as a novel in the Pern canon, it is neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring. The author should not have used familiar characters if she planned on making so many changes. My problem was I have been reading the books in timeline order, 22 of them since the beginning of March and I have a very clear image in my head of who is alive, what the personalities are like, that Stupid is a horse not a six legged ruminant, that Harper Hall is not inside Fort Hold and that you cannot walk from Fort Hold to Fort Weyr. I kept being thrown out of the story by discrepancies like Robinton's curt dismissal of Piemur's report and lack of notice of his state of health..he seems a much show more less empathic man in this incarnation. If I were a newcomer to this book, I think I would have liked it better. If it had been a slice of history with new characters or closer to canon with existing characters it would please long time readers more. It is rather like a fan fiction story where it is acceptable and/or expected that a writer will deviate from canon. The reader has to be prepared or used to variations. Since there are so very many Pern novels that all follow consistently within canon with minimal errors in canon, and a lot of those could be passed off as typos, this is unsettling. All that being said, it is a good first effort at writing in this universe and I hope the author tries again...we are all awaiting a sequel to The Skies of Pern. As a Pern junky, even imperfect Pern is better than no Pern. show less

This is like coffee brewed from used grounds, only by someone who doesn't know what coffee is. A big mishmash of episodes and clueless self examination with no real evidence of personality, other than pompous speechifying.

It might work as an alternate timeline. Too many things are just different. I really don't like her characterization of Master Robinton. I don't like the brand new nicknames. The book grew on me as I read it, but only if I ignored what I remembered from the actual series. If she writes another book I will probably buy it and read it to see where she takes the alternate lines.

I hate that this book was in Audible's Fantasy list included with the Premium Plus subscription and that just by looking over the names of books on the list I didn't see right away that this was book 24 (!!) in the series.
It was just halfway through the book that I went and looked into it's page in more detail and realized this.
That being said, the book did a great job of getting me to know and understand the world in a short time so I didn't feel as lost as I probably should have. Worldbuilding was explained very quickly but very effectively in the very beggining.
Apart from that, though, it suffered from me not being into the universe, and the reading was a bit difficult to keep up with at times.
I'm sure I would've enjoyed it better show more if I had read the previous 23.... show less