Flight Of The White

Hello All.  Last week was a good one for me as far as finishing books go, so many a ramble is in our future.  Let's start with The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey, the third book in the Dragonriders of Pern series.  This finishes the first trilogy in the series and sets up a lot of the future books.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

This book mostly follows young Lord Holder Jaxom and his unusual white dragon Ruth.  Jaxom is frustrated, he and Ruth are not allowed to train as a normal dragon and rider team as he cannot be risked in Thread fall as this would put his Hold in contention and possibly cause more war.  He also is not actually in charge of his own Hold, as his guardian the Warder Lytol is acting as steward until Jaxom is confirmed...which seems to be a really long way off.  After a bit of an outburst, Jaxom is given more responsibility and starts to attend classes outside of his hold.  In frustration Jaxom starts to sneak off under the pretense of visiting a girl (which he does as well) to try and teach Ruth to chew firestone and breathe fire.  He along with ever other dragon are summoned to Benden Weyr when it is discovered that the queen egg has been stolen by the Oldtimers who have been banished to Southern Weyr.  This obviously makes everybody upset, but the angriest is the Weyrwoman Lessa, who vows to get the egg back, even if it means dragon against dragon violence, which is unthinkable.  Jaxom gets a visual of where the egg is from the firelizards and times it to get the egg back to Benden, getting Lessa to calm down a wee bit. Jaxom is allowed to train with the other Werylings and learn to fight Thread...as long as nobody realizes he is actually fighting Thread.   Jaxom and his harper friend 

Menolly are assigned various tasks, some which take them to the Southern continent, where they realize that a trio of stars called the Dawn Sisters do not follow normal star patterns. Jaxom falls ill with a Southern illness and is forced to a long recovery, lucky for him he fell ill at what becomes Cove Hold, a beautiful little bit of land on the Southern Continent.  While he is sick, a mating flight at Ista Weyr almost goes horribly wrong when a couple of the Oldtimers bring their old bronzes to try and fly the new queen dragon.  One of the old bronzes dies in flight and his rider goes mad and is killed by the Benden weyrleader F'lar.  D'ram, one of the reasonable Oldtimers takes over Southern Weyr and restores it to true dragonrider standards.  During this whole mess, Masterharper Robinton suffers a heart attack, and is ordered to rest.  Back at the cove, Jaxom has fallen in love with Shara, the younger sister of the only Holder on Southern, and one of the people to nurse him back to health. A proper hold is built in the cove and Master Robinton is brought down to recover and live in the newly dubbed Cove Hold.  While everybody is down there, they decide to survey the continent on dragon back.  They discover a mountain that shows evidence of being a volcano, and many regular mounds that they assume cover old holds.  They also observe the Dawn Sisters with what they call a far viewer and discover that they are actually metal ships, not stars.  After much digging they discover what is probably the original landing spot of their ancestors before the volcanic activity and Thread drove them to the rockier, stabler and more easily protected North.  The dragon riders secure half the continent for themselves to farm and sustain themselves during intervals, and open the rest for settling.  Jaxom is confirmed as Lord Holder, marrying Shara and letting Lytol go to Cove Hold to help with the excavation project.  Everybody is very hopeful for the future and they all live ever after.

So that was a really long synopsis and I only hit on the big major points.  I think that may be one of my favorite things about these books is the sheer amount of story that is packed in.  Ms. McCaffrey does not spend to much time on angst or lengthy introspection, but keeps the rich story moving.  That is not to say there is not emotion, or growth or introspection, it just means that it happens along with the story instead of grinding it to a halt as we read a chapter on how lonely so and so is.  In this book in particular I like how the personal growth and maturation of Jaxom and Ruth mirror the growth of Pern.  We get a personal story, one we are invested in and tie it into the bigger world history and growth that the author started back in the first book.  I feel this is a good way to tell a big sweeping planet wide story, while still keeping the reader 

invested in a smaller personal story.  I do get a bit sad when they talk of not needing dragon riders anymore, because I feel they are such an integral part of Pern's culture...but I guess eliminating, or at least lessening a deadly menace is a good thing :-)  I also felt that Jaxom and Ruth had a bit of special snowflake syndrome, which is to say, they get to be everything, Lord Holder, dragonrider, favorites of the ruling Weyr, favorites of the Masterharper, friends with all the important people, they are the fastest, the best at timing it, and Ruth is just the most intelligent, well spoken dragon out there.  This is tempered a bit by not having Jaxom, actually be in charge of his own life for most of the book, he is only allowed to do what Lytol  and N'ton, the High Reaches weyrleader allow him to do.  The discovery of the Original Landing, really brings this series into a more sci-fi type of story and less of a pure fantasy one.  I love this rediscovering of Pern's history and the stories that follow.  Again this book sets up more discoveries in future books, and is confirmed in really cool ways in a couple of the authors "prequal" type stories.  Overall this book is a solid entry in the dragonrider series, I give the book 7 out of 10 redfruits.  

What do you think makes a successful blend of sci-fi and fantasy?  Do you prefer epic stories, or more personal stories?  Are you a special snowflake?

Flight Of Sorrow

Hello all, are we ready to continue on our saga of the dragonriders?  I am...sort of.  See this book is one of those books I tend to skip in this series because it is just so darn sad, good, but sad.  What book am I rambling about?  Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey, the second book in the Dragonriders of Pern series.  I remember first reading it a couple months after finishing the Harper Hall trilogy and being both "aha that's what they are talking about" and completely bummed out at the same time, but I'm getting ahead of myself...as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

We start this book about 7 months after we left off on the last one.  We learn very quickly that the Weyrs that were brought forward in time are not fitting in so well 400 turns (years) in the future.  F'lar and Lessa had given up much of their leadership role to the older Weyrs, believing that their vast knowledge and experience in fighting the deadly Thread would make them the natural leaders of the dragonriders.  Alas this is not so, apparently 400 turns changes a lot of things and the Oldtimers (as they have taken to calling the dragonriders from the past) cannot deal with the more independent Holds and Crafthalls.  This all comes to a head when a couple of the dragonriders from an Oldtimer Weyr try and take an expensive knife by force from one of the Crafters.  F'nor, a brown rider from Benden (not an Oldtimer) intervenes and gets an injured shoulder for his trouble.  After it become's clear that the Oldtimer Weyrleaders have not only no intention of not doing anything about this problem, but blame the Crafter for not handing over this valuable knife, F'lar decides to take charge.  Meanwhile down in the newest Weyr, on the Southern Continent the elusive fire lizards are discovered to be Impressionable by just about anybody who is willing to feed them.  Most of the Southern Weyr ends up with at least one of these miniature dragon type creatures (in fact it is from these
creatures that the Pernese ancestors bred the great dragons of Pern) and they are then distributed among the Holds and Crafthalls to ease some of the jealousy of  those who have not, or cannot Impress a dragon.  Also at Southern Weyr, the Queen rider and Weyrwoman Kylara is causing no end of trouble, doing as she pleases and foisting off all her duties onto Brekke, a junior queen rider who is all responsibility.  F'nor and Brekke fall in love while he is convalescing at Southern Weyr and helps her with her various troubles.  Eventually the conflict with the Oldtimers comes to a head, resulting in a duel between F'lar and T'ron, the Oldtimer leader, which results in most of the Oldtimers being banned to the Southern Weyr and the rest of the Weyrs being populated by the current generation.  This leads to F'lar and Lessa being essentially named the leaders of the dragonriders, much to the relief of the Holders and Crafters.  To add to the problems of our poor Weyrleaders, Jaxxom, the boy who took Lessa's spot as Lord Holder of Ruatha has Impressed a runty white dragon...something that may put his Lordship in jeopardy, but that is for the next book.  Also causing...if not trouble, then at least speculation is the discovery of a series of lab like rooms in the older Weyrs, containing mysterious devices and indecipherable records.  From what they can puzzle out they discover that certain grubs can consume Thread, keeping them from burrowing into the ground and destroying the plants.  They also discover a telescope, causing the Lord Holders to try and pressure the dragonriders into getting rid of Thread at it's source, the Red Planet.  Kylara and her people move from the Southern Weyr to High Reaches Weyr to make room for the Oldtimers.  This ends in tragedy when Brekke's dragon rises to mate and Kylara is not there to take her dragon away in time.  This results in a brutal battle between the two queens, ending in both of their deaths.  This is beyond devastating for Brekke and reduces Kylara to a babbling child.  Brekke becomes catatonic with F'nor trying to make her live.  He also decides to quiet the Lord Holders demands by attempting to go to the Red Star with his dragon with near fatal results...turns out there was reason it wasn't done before.  This and the protection of her fire lizard bring Brekke back, sad but back to help nurse F'nor back to health.  The book ends on a slightly hopeful note for a better, more modern future.

Obviously lots of stuff happens in this book, and the information helps the rest of the series make sense, but dang if I don't hate how sad it is.  It is as all Ms. McCaffrey's books, extremely well written and continues on the world she started in the last book.  In fact that is one of the reasons it is so sad.  You come to understand the bond between the dragon and their rider so well, that when Brekke loses hers you feel the pain and agony right along with her.  You leave the last book so hopeful that the Oldtimers will be the answer to saving Pern, and then come to find out that they are in no way adaptable and are in fact way more trouble then they are worth is kind of very upsetting.  When F'nor goes to the Red Star you can feel the heat, the airlessness, the scoring, the heaving mass of Thread...Ugh, no wonder he barely survived!  It's the excellent writing that makes you care about this world that makes this book so hard for me to read.  I am not trying to
dissuade anybody from reading this, I promise.  I think everybody should read it as part of the series.  It is an excellent book that just furthers the amazing story the author started and sets up numerous future stories.  The characters are well written, the world building is as perfect as it gets and the storylines are not only plausible, but compelling.  I do have to admit that this whole series gets to me on a gut level, every time I read any of the Dragonrider of Pern books, I get stuck in that world in my head weeks, I hate being torn out of it and I hate anytime anything bad happens in it...though that is part of what makes it real.   As I'm sure you are sick of hearing words cannot describe the love I have for this series, it is one of the reasons I fell in love with reading as an escape and am so glad I can go back to it anytime I want.  Even this book, a book that if I'm not careful, will actually leave me as sad as if it happened to somebody I know is a treasure to me.  So now that all that babbling is over with, I give it 8 out of 10 cups of klah and recommend it to anybody who is reading this series.
On a side note, my lovely Mamma will be here this week, running me ragged so posting may be a bit spotty, my apologies in advanced.
What book(s) do you both love and hate at the same time?  What book makes you sad on a gut level?  How badly do I need some therapy to remind me that a book is not real?

A True SciFi/Fantasy Author

One thing that irritates me in literature is genre's, they never seem to be able to truly capture the whole idea of a given book.  Take the book Wicked, it is a story based on a fairytale, set in a completely unreal world chock full of magic.  Now I personally would probably place this in the fantasy genre, but nope it's usually found in literature or fiction, of which it is both but seems to fit fantasy better.  One of the reasons I hate this is that it seems to discourage people from reading books they might really enjoy.  To really irk me (I know they do it on purpose just to drive me crazy) most places combined Science Fiction and Fantasy into one big SciFi/Fantasy genre. Anybody who reads either of these genres knows that they are NOT the same thing. 

Having gone on that rant I now would like to present to you an author who actually does combine the genres of SciFi and Fantasy almost flawlessly.  She is also one of my favoritists (another special word of mine) authors.  I am talking about the wonderful Anne McCaffrey.  I love her for reasons too numerous to put into a single blog post...unless you all have about three hours to read this?  No...nobody?  Ok I'll keep to my top reasons.  The main reason is probably very nostalgic, I found her book Dragonsong, the first of the Harper Hall Trilogy my freshman year of high school during a rough period of life and it really took me away to another world. 

The second reason is she really was one of the first accepted females in the SciFi genre.  She was the first female winner of both the Hugo and Nebula award which is a pretty big deal, she is probably the reason I read as much SciFi as I do.  The third reason as I mentioned before is her ability to blend SciFi with Fantasy so seamlessly.  Her most famous of books is probably her Pern series in which the Harper Hall Trilogy is set. 

The original trilogy The Dragon Riders of Pern tells of a technologically regressed world that fights a mindless menace from space know as Thread, a spore that aggressively eats all organic matter.  The people of Pern use Dragons and there empathetic riders to protect the world from Thread.  Now I know what your thinking, dragons are totally fantasy and have nothing to do with SciFi and yet Ms. McCaffrey manages to convey the genetic and scientific reasons for the dragons existence in this world.  There are many other books in this series detailing the arrival, history and current situation on this planet, really cementing the marriage of the two genres. The series is so popular is even was it's own Pern Wiki

Ms. McCaffrey has written numerous other novels and short stories some with other authors in some wonderful collaborations.  One of my other favorite series of hers is definitely more SciFi, but still has elements of the fantastical is the Talent Series comprised of the Pegasus books and the Tower and the Hive books.  These are about the emergence of people with amazing mental powers and the ensuing changes that come about because of there abilities.  The Coelura is a short read that is essentially a fantasy set in space, really transporting.

 Like I said I could go on and on and on and on about Ms. McCaffrey and her works but I think I will stop now and let you go read some of these for yourself.  Let me know which books you have discovered.  What books/authors have really made an impact in your literary life? Is this a really long post?  Did you actually read the whole thing?