2006-02-12
Dragonseye
Author: Anne McCaffrey
Am I reading the culls? Is there a good reason why these three novels were published as in a discount softcover in 2003 and ended up selling for $3.99 in a warehouse outlet by 2004?
Dragonseye starts out with a good, engaging plot. The year is 257, and it's been 200 years since Thread stopped falling on Pern. Society was forever altered to accomodate this menace, and no one has forgotten it -- except for one Lord Holder Chalkin, who is more interesting in taxing his people to death. Bitra Hold is completely unprepared for the Second Pass, only moths away now, but Holders are autonomous within their land. What can be done?
If Dragonseye were the story of how the world fixed that problem, it would have been a good read. In fact, it is partly that story, and that part of it moves quickly and purposefully. The problem is that story ends about 2/3 of the way into the book. The last 1/3 of the story bides its time until the First Fall of the Second Pass. It's as if the author decided, over 30 years after she first wrote a story on this alternately idillic and cursed planet, that she should fill in a certain year of history. When she got down to it it turned out nothing that exciting happened, but she went ahead with the original plan anyway.
If the story jumped from the resolution of the strongest plotline I mentioned into the last chapter, showing the first Fall, it would have made sense. As it is, the best you can say is it's the story of the preparations for the Second Pass, which all went quite well with no serious issues. Maybe the series's established fans were interested in this bit of backhistory, but as a new reader I wasn't hooked.
Partly because I'm disappointed in Pern, but mainly because I have two trips coming up and don't want to try to read this particular volume on planes, I will read something else for a couple weeks before returning to Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern.
Am I reading the culls? Is there a good reason why these three novels were published as in a discount softcover in 2003 and ended up selling for $3.99 in a warehouse outlet by 2004?
Dragonseye starts out with a good, engaging plot. The year is 257, and it's been 200 years since Thread stopped falling on Pern. Society was forever altered to accomodate this menace, and no one has forgotten it -- except for one Lord Holder Chalkin, who is more interesting in taxing his people to death. Bitra Hold is completely unprepared for the Second Pass, only moths away now, but Holders are autonomous within their land. What can be done?
If Dragonseye were the story of how the world fixed that problem, it would have been a good read. In fact, it is partly that story, and that part of it moves quickly and purposefully. The problem is that story ends about 2/3 of the way into the book. The last 1/3 of the story bides its time until the First Fall of the Second Pass. It's as if the author decided, over 30 years after she first wrote a story on this alternately idillic and cursed planet, that she should fill in a certain year of history. When she got down to it it turned out nothing that exciting happened, but she went ahead with the original plan anyway.
If the story jumped from the resolution of the strongest plotline I mentioned into the last chapter, showing the first Fall, it would have made sense. As it is, the best you can say is it's the story of the preparations for the Second Pass, which all went quite well with no serious issues. Maybe the series's established fans were interested in this bit of backhistory, but as a new reader I wasn't hooked.
Partly because I'm disappointed in Pern, but mainly because I have two trips coming up and don't want to try to read this particular volume on planes, I will read something else for a couple weeks before returning to Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern.
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.
