Dragonflight

I was introduced to this series by a friend in high school (the late 70s) and have been a huge fan ever since. I have read the early books several times and was long overdue for a reread when I picked it up again. It didn't take long for me to become immersed in the world of Pern once more. I've read several reviews that complain about behaviors and attitudes, but I look at it through the eyes of when it was written (1968).

People from Earth colonized the world of Pern, but over the years, Earth forgot about them. The early colonists had modern technology to help them settle into their new world. This technology became vital when the planet was attacked by organisms the settlers called "Thread." The bioengineers bred fighting beasts show more called dragons, creatures with strong telepathic links with their riders. Over the centuries, the dragons protected the planet and its inhabitants from the every two-hundred-years incursions. Also, modern technology broke down over the years, and life on Pern began to resemble a feudal society. I loved the descriptions of life on Pern, both in the Weyr and the holds. The small details of daily living and the larger ones of significant events make the world real and believable.

As this book opens, it has been four hundred years since the last attack of Thread. Many believe there will be no more Thread and resent the requirement to support the dragonriders. The current leadership, R'gul, at the only surviving weyr, Benden, believes it is best to make as few demands as possible, keeping the dragonriders out of the public eye. He, too, believes that there is no more Thread. A younger dragonrider, F'lar, is confident that R'gul is wrong and that a new attack is imminent. With a new queen egg about to hatch, F'lar is one of several bronze dragon riders who goes on Search for candidates for the new queen. This eventually brings him to Ruatha Hold and Lessa.

Lessa is the only surviving member of the family who held Ruatha. Ten years earlier, a neighboring Holder invaded and murdered her entire family. Lessa, age eleven, barely escaped and has been living disguised as a drudge, waiting for her chance at revenge. Lessa is clever, intelligent, and occasionally ruthless in her methods. F'lar's arrival sets in motion a series of events that will change her life forever. Even though I know how it turns out, I am caught up in the intensity every time I read the book. F'lar's belief that Lessa is exactly what Pern needs is convincing.

I felt for Lessa as she was swept from the only home she knew to the strangeness of the Weyr. She knew nothing of what was happening, and F'lar refused to explain more than the barest details. When it came time to Impress the new queen, I loved seeing Lessa stand back, observe for a bit, and learn from others' mistakes. When she acts, she does so decisively, and her Impression of Ramoth is described in emotional detail. Here we get the first inkling of the depth of the connection between dragon and rider. But this is only the beginning. As the new Weyrwoman, Lessa must now undergo intense training. A naturally impatient person, she is frustrated by the pedantic instruction provided by R'gul. As convinced as F'lar about the coming Thread, she doesn't understand why he doesn't do anything about the issue because, once again, no one tells her anything of importance. In her frustration and ignorance, Lessa makes some choices that could have ended badly but for a fortunately timed mating flight.

Said mating flight changes everything. The description of the flight is vivid and intense. I loved seeing it through the eyes of the linked Lessa and Ramoth, which gave it extra depth. F'lar's Mnementh became the queen's mate, which caused a change in leadership for the Weyr. I loved watching F'lar take charge and shake things up. He is the firm leader that the Weyr and Pern need, but even he can't magically fix the neglect of decades. I loved watching him gather together the brilliant minds of the time to collaborate on ways to protect the planet. One of my favorite scenes involves Masterharper Robinton and his eloquent smackdown of the skeptics and vocal support of F'lar.

I could feel F'lar's desperation as he worked to prepare for Thread's arrival. The clock is ticking, and he has only a few dragons to use instead of the necessary hundreds. The first encounter with Thread is both terrifying and exhilarating. I felt his pain at the subsequent consequences and despair that they won't prevail. At the same time, Lessa comes into her strength as Weywoman, her early life allowing her to see what must be done. Her belief in the fate of the five missing Weyrs led to a stunning solution. I loved this section with F'lar's fear for Lessa, his hope for her survival, and his reaction to her return. I loved F'lar's surprise for her, and R'gul's reaction was very satisfying.

The relationship between F'lar and Lessa is challenging to describe. At times it feels almost Pygmalion-like as F'lar molds Lessa into his concept of a Weyrwoman. He admires her intelligence, resilience, and determination but is frequently frustrated by her impulsiveness. He tends to be domineering at times which aggravates her stubbornness. Lessa is frequently torn in her feelings for F'lar. She is attracted but wary, a feeling reinforced by the mating flight's results. There are times when she seems to antagonize him deliberately. She also respects his belief in the traditions that herald the imminent arrival of Thread and supports his efforts to bring the Weyr and Holders into line. Though they never overtly state their feelings, by the end of the book, it is clear that they do love each other. show less

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Dick Hill. I can’t really pinpoint all the reasons why, but his narration didn’t work well for me. His non-dialogue narration was fine as far as I can remember; I think most of my issues were with the dialogue. He over-dramatized some of it, making the characters, even the ones we were supposed to like, sometimes sound psychotic and deranged to my ears. I think I wouldn’t have cared for the characters much anyway based on the text, but the narration really didn’t help in that regard.

Story
On the surface of it, this seems like something I should have liked. It seems questionable as to show more whether it’s fantasy or science fiction, but it reads very much like an epic fantasy story and I’m usually easy to please when it comes to epic fantasy. Somehow this one didn’t work for me, though. The story is set on a planet called Pern which occasionally comes into range of another planet that has deadly “Threads” that invade Pern and threaten all life. Dragons were created to help fight the thready threat, bonded with Riders. The problem is that the threat recurs so rarely, and it has now been about 400 years. People have begun to disbelieve the legends and are no longer prepared to face the threat if it comes again.

The story only moderately held my attention, despite having elements I feel like I should have liked, and I didn’t much care for the characters. Lessa was foolish, irresponsible, and annoying as hell. I wanted to like F’lar, but he was an ass. I might have overlooked the initial rape of Lessa when they were caught up in the dragons’ passion and didn’t have their heads on straight. But he kept doing it! And yet I got the impression that the reader was expected to respect his character. What the hell? And he shook her so much (not in a sexual context) that I guess her brains fell out, based on her behavior. Then Lessa apparently fell in love with him anyway. Rape ‘em and shake ‘em ‘til they love you, I guess. I also grew exasperated with all the time travel paradoxes. This paragraph may have more cuss words in it (all 3 of them) than I’ve used in my previous reviews for the year combined. This is indicative of much annoyance. :p

Some elements reminded me of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, so I couldn’t help comparing the two. I much preferred Temeraire, where I adored the characters and felt more invested in the story. It’s possible that I might have felt differently if I’d read them in the opposite order, and I may have done better with this in print than I did in audio. It’s also possible that I just wasn’t in the right mood for it.

I was going to give it 2.5 stars and round up to 3 on Goodreads, but somewhere in the middle of typing up my rant I decided to round down to 2 instead. I don’t think I’ve ever rated an epic fantasy-ish book this low before. I might consider giving it another try in print someday to see if I like it better that way, but not for quite a long time. show less

Still one of the best fantasy books I have ever read. And to think it was written waaaay back in 1968! It shows a smart, flawed heroine, political maneuverings, and a world-building that came from thinking and postulating about what might have happened when the spaceships grew tired of their mission.

Lessa is the last survivor of the ruling family of Ruatha Hold, one of the oldest fortresses answering to the oldest Weyr, Fort Weyr. How these got the names and designations they did is not part of this book. Instead, we are picking up with Lessa's life, her past told in bits, and the visit of two dragonriders to her hold. And what results.

What I did not grasp as a smart 16-year-old when I first read this is the need to tell the story of show more why the adults in charge have brought dragonriders into such disrepute. And why the dragonriders F'lar and his half brother, F'nor, are working so hard to help Lessa succeed once she has impressed the new queen dragon, Ramoth. It's all about complacency and a forgetting of the reasons for the old ways and old ballads.

Lessa learns about the civilization on Pern, the ballads, the teachings, what it means to be Weyrwoman, over the couple of years it takes for her queen to mature. When Ramoth has her first mating flight, Lessa is partnered with the rider of the bronze dragon who mates with her, F'lar, and the two quickly work to bring in better ways of running the Weyr.

Part of the fall of dragons into disrepute is the lack of a reason for their existence. Dragons of Pern chew firestone and flame away Threads, which fall on Pern from a neighboring planet every 200 years for about 50 years. In this story, the Threads have not fallen for 400 years so the Holds are wondering why they need to sustain the population of the last remaining Weyr, Bendan Weyr. And for some strange reason, the other Weyrs have been abandoned for many hundreds of years with no record of their inhabitants' whereabouts.

Then Thread begins to fall, otherwise complacent Holds watch their crops and greenspaces burned away, and the existing dragonriders realize that they do not have the numbers to effectively guard against the destruction of Thread. How Lessa puts together the bits and pieces of dragons and their riders, what they are capable of as a duo, leads to a rejuvenation of the reason for dragonriders and is the latter part of this book. show less

Nearly everyone I know read and loved Pern when they were a teenager, so I thought it was about time I caught up. I do wish I'd found this book at the same time as everyone else, but I did enjoy it.

It has dragons! Except it's not fantasy, it's sci fi, because they are dragons on a colonised planet that are essential for fighting alien spores! And just when you've got your head round that, there's a Big Reveal, and you find out they are time travelling dragons! I mean, what's not to like about a strong female lead and time travelling dragons?

It is a bit problematic, or at least it's not a book about consent. Lessa is taken from her home and placed in mortal danger to possibly bond with the queen dragon without an explanation or any show more choice. And F'lar and Lessa's relationship, with its snark and power imbalance and dragon induced sex is probably not a model for the young. But Lessa is clever and powerful and changes history.

It's interesting to run the story in reverse. Our good guys are good because they stayed alert and guarded the old ways and protected Pern even after 400 years of waiting. But if there really had never been another attack from the threads, they would have been quite foolish. They are Right to have faith and stay vigilant, and are the heros because of it... but that moral does make you wonder, would it have been good to wait for 1000 years? Forever? show less

*3.75* Book club book :)

Hmm. Hmm. HMMMM. This is the sound of me trying to rate Dragonflight. Let me organize my thoughts and make a list ;)

- Lessa is awesome. She is stubborn, clever, badass, making her own way in a very patriarchal world. I can imagine how innovative it seemed in a sci-fi/fantasy book published in 1968. It’s just that while reading I often wished I had met Lessa in a different book.

- OMG DRAGONS. Besides, the dragons have a lifelong bond with their riders, are telepathic, and can teleport. What’s not to love about a great story (yes, there is a compelling story here) set in such a world?

- The writing is of the “She went. She saw. She felt. And then this happened. And then he said this and that” variety. For me show more as a reader, it felt like tearing through a thick forest, not as an intellectual challenge (which I appreciate in certain books), but as in trying to find the story and the characters among all these sentences. There was a lot of telling, not showing in this book. I do have to admit that by around 60%, I was sufficiently immersed in the story to find the quality of the writing less irritating.

- Lessa is the only character that stands out, all the others are very flat and I had trouble telling them apart.

- I found the relationship between Lessa and F’lar disturbing. It starts with a rape. But, forgive and forget, right? Naturally, it’s also perfectly all right for your partner to shake you every time you “disobey” or behave irresponsibly. In time, you fall in love.

I do like the world of Pern, and might consider reading other books in the series. Just to see what happens… show less

Summary: The Dragonriders of Pern protect their planet from the ecological disaster of invading Threads, whose coming is predicted by the red star. But there hasn't been a Threadfall in centuries, and the dragonweyrs are mostly empty, with most common people believing that the Threads are gone for good. Only the riders of Benden Weyr keep the old traditions, and that includes a search for a girl to become Weyrwoman, and form a psychic bond with the newly-hatched queen dragon. Rider F'lar believes he has found a suitable candidate in Lessa, a serving girl who bears the last of a noble bloodline. Once Lessa Impresses the queen dragon, and her dragon mates with F'lar's dragon, he becomes Weyrleader, but Lessa has a mind of her own… and show more both of them will be needed in order to face the threat of imminent Threadfall.

Review: Errrrm, I don't know about this one, y'all. I mean, yes, this is a classic, and yes, it is referenced all the time, and yes, it's a product of its times and shouldn't necessarily be judged by today's social norms and all, but: damn. This is a prime example of an otherwise interesting world and engaging story being almost ruined for me by the super-gross gender politics involved.

I mean, okay. The dragons? Are awesome. And I totally see the seeds of later telepathic and vaguely snarky dragons being planted by this story. I totally get why Mori from Among Others spends so much time wanting to Impress a dragon. The world is also interesting. I found bits of it vaguely cliché (probably unfairly, since this came before most of what I'm comparing it to), and McCaffrey's method of leaving some details of her worldbuilding unexplained didn't always sit entirely well with me, but it eventually all made sense, and it all worked in service of the story, which was cool, internally consistent, and went in some directions that I wasn't expecting.

But. BUT. The gender politics. Like, there's this whole system in which girls are basically kidnapped from their homes to try to Impress the Queen, and then not really allowed to do anything once they do become Weyrwoman, and then it's assumed that whichever male dragon their dragon mates with, they will have sex with that dragon's rider, (ostensibly because their telepathically-linked dragon sexy-time emotions are too strong to be resisted?) and essentially become his concubine. Gross! And worse, this is the way it is, with no indication that anybody sees anything much wrong with the system. I honestly didn't realize until almost halfway through that we were supposed to see F'lar as a protagonist and not a villain. He is arrogant, he's rude, he's calculating, and he's not particularly nice to Lessa most of the time, alternating between condescending to her, ignoring her, and shaking her senseless for disobeying his orders. Well, all that, plus this:

"He caught her arm and felt her body tense. He set his teeth, and wishing, as he had a hundred times since Remoth rose in her first mating flight, that Lessa had not been virgin too. He had not thought to control his dragon-incited emotions, and Lessa's first sexual experience had been violent. It had surprised him to be first, considering that her adolescent years had been spent drudging for lascivious warders and soldier types. Evidently, no one had bothered to penetrate the curtain of rags and the coat of filth she had carefully maintained as a disguise. He had been a considerate and gentle bedmate ever since, but, unless Remoth and Nementh were involved, he might as well call it rape. Yet he knew, someday, somehow, he would coax her into responding wholeheartedly to his lovemaking. He had a certain pride in his skill, and he was in a position to persevere." --from time point 5:00:15

(My notes from this point say: SUPER GROSS AND RAPEY, DUDE. Which: yeah. And this is the hero! We're supposed to be rooting for him!)

Lessa herself is pretty awesome, except when she's anxiously trying to win F'lar's approval (or not get shaken.) I would have liked the book a lot better if the backbone she clearly has was on display the whole time. The story itself is quite good, and there are times when the gross gender issues are pushed to the background, but they were never entirely out of my head, which didn't exactly ruin the book, but did definitely make it less enjoyable than it could have been. 3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I understand why it's considered a classic of SF/F, and there are a lot of really good elements to the world and the story and some of the characters. I found the gender politics pretty off-putting, but if you're able to treat them as a regrettable product of their time, there's a good story underneath. I'm not in a big hurry to read the next book in the series, though. show less

Dragonflight tells of the story of Pern, a distant earth-like planet, which is invaded every 200 years by extraterrestrial spores called "threads" that would devastate all vegetation if not protected by the planet’s dragons and dragon-riders. As the story opens, the old ways are dwindling, and few believe the old ballads that tell of the threat posed by the threads. Dragon-rider F’lar sets out on a quest to find a new recruit to become a dragon-rider for a new dragon whose egg is about to hatch. He comes across Lessa, a young woman descended from royals who is in hiding from the man who killed her family and took their land.

The primary strength of this book is the world-building, which is impressive for such a short book. There are show more multiple battles, including a fight between good and evil and a fight for survival against a dangerous enemy. Originally published in the late 1960’s, it is easy to see this book’s influences on later works, such as The Inheritance Cycle with respect to dragon eggs, telepathic powers, and riders bonding with their dragons. I did not care for the relationship between F’lar and Lessa, which is abuse based, and the mating ritual is particularly distasteful. The writing style is very basic. Regular readers of fantasy will probably enjoy this book more than I did. show less