2006-02-07
Dragonsdawn
Author: Anne McCaffrey
I had heard of but never read any of Anne McCaffrey's stories of the Dragonriders of Pern. For some reason I always avoided them. I think it was partly because she was rather popular when I was growing up, and I was wary of that popularity. There were a lot of books out, and with them in alphabetical order on a library shelf I didn't know where to start. Another reason was that I always preferred science fiction, and I didn't want to deal with dragons and fantasy. Imagine my surprise to find that the setting is pure science fiction. It's fantasy-flavored science fiction, I guess, but if you're going to make the distinction at all Dragonsdawn, at least, is solidly sci-fi.
I didn't exactly make a conscious decision to look into this world, but when I was last at the Crown Books Liquidation Center in Irvine I saw a big, softcover edition (collectively titled On Dragonwings) of three complete novels for $3.99, and I decided I would give it a try. The first novel in the collection is Dragonsdawn, written in 1988. I have done a little research since finishing it and discovered that this is not a recommended introduction to the series. The author basically recommends following her order of publishing and her top fan sites make only minor adjustments to that. Dragonsdawn is a genesis story, but it's recommended ninth in reading order.
Did the series start out as fantasy and only get retrofitted to science fiction when it came time to write this book? Or was McCaffrey a sci-fi writer all along, even though she chose to set her stories in an ideal fantasy world? I'm not sure I'll find out.
The writing in this story gets very choppy at times. There are a couple main characters whose thoughts we follow most of the time, but as some tension and mystery builds around what a particular person is doing we'll suddenly get a couple pages from that person's perspective, explaining everything. Many of the smaller plotlines begun in the first third of the book are dead ends. Only one comes back in the middle part of the book, and even that really doesn't make a big impact on the story.
The other fault I find is a tendancy to avoid action in favor of reviewing events. Many times the narrative jumps forward a couple months, not to the next exciting bit of action, but past it, where we get to hear a conversation about what happened. After a while this got very disappointing. Some major events were shown live, and McCaffrey proves that she can write live action just fine in those instances. Maybe it comes from writing the ancient history of a world that's a bestseller based on the "present day", but I found this periodic backwards focus disturbing.
Overall, the story was an average sci-fi new-colony tale. If it stood alone, I might be interested in seeing where things went next. Also, if it stood alone I might wonder about the choice of where to end the story. It makes perfect sense if the point of the story is to present the origins of the Dragonriders, and you could argue that the final events prove the colony is in significantly less danger than it was just a bit earlier. Still, now that I know I won't be seeing these characters or, in a significant sense, this world again (because it will change significantly as years go by) I'm not really geared up to read the next Pern novel. In a way, this story does stand alone, because no other novels were set at this early time.
I will continue with the remaining two novels in the compilation I bought. These follow Dragonsdawn in recommended reading order but are still overall way down the list. Now that I've done some research I'll know where to go if the remaining books get my interest. Until I see how they go, however, neither this book nor this series have my recommendation.
I had heard of but never read any of Anne McCaffrey's stories of the Dragonriders of Pern. For some reason I always avoided them. I think it was partly because she was rather popular when I was growing up, and I was wary of that popularity. There were a lot of books out, and with them in alphabetical order on a library shelf I didn't know where to start. Another reason was that I always preferred science fiction, and I didn't want to deal with dragons and fantasy. Imagine my surprise to find that the setting is pure science fiction. It's fantasy-flavored science fiction, I guess, but if you're going to make the distinction at all Dragonsdawn, at least, is solidly sci-fi.
I didn't exactly make a conscious decision to look into this world, but when I was last at the Crown Books Liquidation Center in Irvine I saw a big, softcover edition (collectively titled On Dragonwings) of three complete novels for $3.99, and I decided I would give it a try. The first novel in the collection is Dragonsdawn, written in 1988. I have done a little research since finishing it and discovered that this is not a recommended introduction to the series. The author basically recommends following her order of publishing and her top fan sites make only minor adjustments to that. Dragonsdawn is a genesis story, but it's recommended ninth in reading order.
Did the series start out as fantasy and only get retrofitted to science fiction when it came time to write this book? Or was McCaffrey a sci-fi writer all along, even though she chose to set her stories in an ideal fantasy world? I'm not sure I'll find out.
The writing in this story gets very choppy at times. There are a couple main characters whose thoughts we follow most of the time, but as some tension and mystery builds around what a particular person is doing we'll suddenly get a couple pages from that person's perspective, explaining everything. Many of the smaller plotlines begun in the first third of the book are dead ends. Only one comes back in the middle part of the book, and even that really doesn't make a big impact on the story.
The other fault I find is a tendancy to avoid action in favor of reviewing events. Many times the narrative jumps forward a couple months, not to the next exciting bit of action, but past it, where we get to hear a conversation about what happened. After a while this got very disappointing. Some major events were shown live, and McCaffrey proves that she can write live action just fine in those instances. Maybe it comes from writing the ancient history of a world that's a bestseller based on the "present day", but I found this periodic backwards focus disturbing.
Overall, the story was an average sci-fi new-colony tale. If it stood alone, I might be interested in seeing where things went next. Also, if it stood alone I might wonder about the choice of where to end the story. It makes perfect sense if the point of the story is to present the origins of the Dragonriders, and you could argue that the final events prove the colony is in significantly less danger than it was just a bit earlier. Still, now that I know I won't be seeing these characters or, in a significant sense, this world again (because it will change significantly as years go by) I'm not really geared up to read the next Pern novel. In a way, this story does stand alone, because no other novels were set at this early time.
I will continue with the remaining two novels in the compilation I bought. These follow Dragonsdawn in recommended reading order but are still overall way down the list. Now that I've done some research I'll know where to go if the remaining books get my interest. Until I see how they go, however, neither this book nor this series have my recommendation.
