Dragonquest

After Anne Mcaffrey died late 2011 I rooted around in my bookshelves for all my old pern paperbacks from the early 80's. I was utterly obsessed with these books when I was a young teenager, and they were extremely formative in my own history as a writer. The first novel I ever wrote -- longhand, in mead spiralbound notebooks -- was a thin knockoff of Dragonflight (I seem to remember it had unicorns, but I'm so embarrassed by that book I haven't managed to actually read enough of it to check).

I reread all three books in the first Pern trilogy because I was curious to see if they held up to my very fond memories of them. Sadly the answer was no. Sometimes its best to let your fond childhood memories remain memories. :(

(I've duplicated this review across all three books).

Dragonflight: The earliest of the Pern books and the most problematic. It's a fast read and an OK story, but...ugh. My memories of the book were that it was one of the few SF books at the time that revolved around a strong female lead, one that I could identify and aspire to when I was 13. I was appalled to discover on reread that the gender politics are solidly prefeminist and really, really icky. And the writing is terrible -- terrible characters, terrible descriptions, too many similar confusing names, to many shift of POV. I was ashamed for my younger self for liking this book so much.

Dragonquest: Similar gender issues in this book to the previous, but better writing and a really compelling plot. I ripped through the book in a few hours. Not great art, but good storytelling. The best of the three.

The White Dragon: I didn't realize that the entire Harper Hall trilogy is supposed to take place in between Dragonquest and TWD, and I should have read those before starting this one. I didn't think much of this book; it felt much more leisurely than the fast-paced plotting of Dragonquest, with many more characters and threads (heh) and not a lot of narrative tensions. Jaxom as a character didn't much appeal to me, and it was just as gross to see the wierd gender politics of Pern from the male point of view. The big reveal as to the origins of Pern seems a sort of deus ex machina letdown (although the extended prologues always explained this, it was never a big part of the plot). It just didn't feel like a satisfying conclusion to me, and after reading this book I just felt all dragonned out.

Also as a side note, everyone is always striding in these books. F'lar strode in to the room! F'nor strode out of the weyr! I mentioned it to my husband about 2/3rds through TWD and then I couldn't help laughing about it every time the word showed up after that. You could make a drinking game out of it and get truly pissed indeed.