I really like the premise here: a planet called Pern that was colonized and forgotten by the rest of humanity, its technology mostly vanishing with time. Every 250 years a neighboring planet passes nearby and is the source of spores that "attack" Pern, voraciously consuming all organic material unless they are destroyed first. The Pernese use intelligent firebreathing dragons to fight the threads. A human rider has a telepathic bond with their dragon, formed by Impression at the dragon's hatching. The bonding instantly creates a very close, lifelong relationship. These dragonriders live in separate communities (called Weyrs) whose function is being ready to defend Pern against the threads, in the next pass of the "red star". The rest of Pern depend on the Weyrs to protect them when the threads come, but in the long intervals between passes the reason for the Weyrs' existance can be forgiotten, and there are tensions between the dragonriders and the communities that are supposed to maintain them.

So far so good, but the execution was not so great. The dragons can not only teleport in space, but also in time, and the possibility of time travel removes a lot of tension to the plot, because you can always fix something by traveling back in time. Also, the description of the community of the Weyr is rather superficial, focusing on the "weyrwoman" and the "weyrleader", who is chosen depending on which dragon mates with the queen dragon. Everything the characters do turns out well, and as a romance it's rather superficial also.

Quite readable, but a bit frustrating because you sense that something more could be done with these ideas. The best part is the glimpses of fascinating worldbuilding. ( )

Awakening to a sense of impending danger, Lessa flees to the filthy lair of the Ruath Holdā€™s watch-weyr. Thus begins Dragonflight, the first book in the legendary Dragon Riders series by Anne McCaffrey.

Fā€™lar and Fā€™nor, his half-brother, are searching for young women who possess empathic qualities that might enable them to imprint the son-to-be-born queen dragon of Brenden Weyr. Fā€™lar is convinced that deadly threads will soon fall on Pern despite 400 years in which no threads have fallen. Threads burrow into the earth and kill all animal and vegetable life. Pern will become a dead planet devoid of life if threads reach the surface in sufficient numbers.

The recent publication of Fourth Wing, modeled after the Dragon Rider series in many respects, prompted me to reread Dragonflight, which I first read in the late 1960s. Dragonflight and the following books in the Dragon Rider series are well worth reading or rereading. ( )

This book was fun. Its got people-who-strongly-dislike-each-other-to-lovers, its got dragons, its got time travel, its got a strange mashup of science and fantasy. The only thing that really irritated me was the names, and the book did begin with a lot of jargon, but it was smooth sailing after the first chapter. ( )

This was disappointing. First off, it's not fantasy at all, it's definitely science fiction. "Dragons" is extremely misleading in this sense (not that I like dragons, but just to clarify).

Ultimately, this is a story about time travel, a force organized to protect the world from a recurring threat that, in the intervals, people forget about. Unfortunately the characters are all completely flat or one-dimensional, the author is extremely cavalier about time travel and it's effects, and the story becomes predictable as soon as you are given enough information to make any guesses about what will happen next. It was a chore to read this, even though it was so short.

I will not be continuing this series, and don't regret it. 2 stars only because the book had promise, but I thought about 1 star as well. ( )

The first couple of chapters threw a bunch of terms that I was not familiar with. Then it started becoming quite interesting and I was hooked. Also about halfway thru, I realized there was a glossary and info in the back of the book that would have helped in those first couple of chapters in the beginning. ( )