3.3 stars
Although this wasn’t a bad book, it wasn’t my kind of read, and the plot developed in some strange directions which I’ll get to in a moment. It started strong, but by the end, it was really losing me. It should be said that this is the first thing I’ve ever read from Anne McCaffrey, and maybe that was a mistake since I’m pretty sure these aren’t the first stories in the chronology. That said, this was still… messy.
These are self-declared sci-fi stories set in a fantasy-like world with teleporting dragons, though these aren’t the focus of the book. The spotlight goes to the “fire lizards”, which are tiny cousins of the dragons, and “Harpers”, which are sort of what would happen if a bard, a social influencer, and a history teacher collided.
The layout of Pern is based upon something called “Thread”; tiny, silvery insects (or worms?) that rain down from the skies like snow from your worst nightmare. Thread eat anything organic they come in contact with, causing anyone caught out in the open to be “Thread-scored” – I.e. partially eaten. Dragon riders patrol these areas and use their mounts to burn Thread out of the air, but there’s only so many riders to go around. This means that settlements, or Holds, are few and far between, often underground or built into cliffsides for safety.
Open the first of three parts in this book, Dragonsong. Menolly is our main character, and she comes from one of the most isolated and therefore ‘stuck-in-their-ways’ cultures. Menolly is the prodigy student of the Harper in her village, but when he dies with no male Harper to replace him, she must temporarily take up the mantel until a replacement arrives.
Despite her skill, she is berated and scorned by her family if her lessons stray so much as a hair from the old ways. Her “tunings” as her parents call them are not only unacceptable, but deserving of severe beatings. One day while working to gut fish, her knife slips, cutting into her left arm. This wound is then bandaged incorrectly and purposefully neglected by her parents with the intent to permanently render the tendons in her hand useless. This prevents her from playing instruments without pain, and she falls into a depression.
This part of the book was well done. It did an excellent job of making me hate her family and root for her to either get out of dodge or buck their authority. She then escapes her Hold and stumbles across a nest of fire lizard eggs. Fire lizards were considered to be a bit of an urban legend since they often live far from any human activity. She saves a clutch of eggs and befriends nine new born lizards who then stick by her side throughout the rest of the story. This is near the end of Dragonsong, and everything goes downhill from here in terms of story telling. Up to this point, we’ve been given conflict, direction, and a new start for Menolly. We’re left wondering how everything will end with her hateful family, her repressed musical talent, and her fate as someone living outside the bounds of a Hold… but the books seem to want to ignore a lot of what’s been built up here.
She’s then caught out in the open during Thread fall (again. This is actually the second time she’s let herself be blindsided by it, which felt a little strange seeing just how dangerous this stuff is and how easy it is to see it coming on the horizon since it shimmers like a silver cloud). Anyhow, a dragon rider just so happens to spot her running her feet bloody trying to escape it, and swoops her up onto dragon back before teleporting her to safety. She finds herself in a new Hold that’s far less draconian, and tries to hide her identity so she won’t be forced to return home. This doesn’t hold up for long, but luckily, no one there tries to force her to go back anyways.
While her wounds heal, she’s introduced to another young woman. It seems like these two might become close friends, but I honestly can’t remember her name because she vanishes in any meaningful way from the latter half for the book. She felt injected into the story as a tool to introduce other people that have bonded with fire lizards, then forgotten as soon as she was no longer needed.
A lot of this book tends to feel this way. So many elements end up being added into the storyline as a convenient way to introduce elements, but ultimately have little to no impact on the development of the plot itself. This lead to a lot of plant without payoff until is irked me to pick up the book and continue reading.
Later, (much later, after skipping some inconsequential events such as a dragon hatching that ended up having no impact) Menolly is taken to the Harper Hall by the Master Harper after her identity as the prodigy student is revealed. One more thing I’ll say about this is that it felt like the author was always skirting the edges of revelations or resolutions of conflict. Tension would be built up and up and up, and then when the climax hit, it was rushed through and brushed aside as if in a scramble to return to the baseline pace. After Menolly is accepted by the Master Harper, the tone quickly tries to revert itself to the tense, slow, and generally unkind atmosphere.
At this point I was still hanging on, waiting to see what great changes Menolly’s talent would bring to the world and waiting for the seemingly inevitable final clash between her and her family. This was the end of Dragonsong and the beginning of Dragonsinger.
Within the first few chapters of Dragonsinger, the tension ramps up to a new level when Menolly has some kind of prophetic vision. She wakes in the middle of the night screaming in terror as her fire lizards fly into a panicked frenzy and become so frightened by what they sense that they teleport themselves into hiding. Even a dragon that was stationed to keep watch over the hall teleports away without its rider, which is highly unusual behavior. She has a vision of black goo swarming up the nation, and the words of a song in her mind that begs the listener not to forget her name. Surely something so traumatizing as this would lead to a huge revelation of war or calamity, right?…. Right? Well… no. It never talks about this again.
Turns out that a dragon rider teleported into the sun in an attempt to destroy the source of Thread, and since dragons are all telepathically linked (apparently), they all freaked out. Basically, this entire scene was used as a tool to demonstrate the telepathic connection between dragons, fire lizards, and their owners. And that’s it. We never talk about the fact that a dragon rider *flew into the sun* again or what kind of repercussions such an incredible feat could entail. It just vanishes from the plot, never to return.
Now, I understand that this is part of a very large interconnected timeline of stories and that some of these plot lines were meant to be taken up later (I assume), but that doesn’t make leaving a bunch of loose ends inside the current story work out too well. Dragonsinger is the second book in this book, so not only does this plot thread not return in this story, but it doesn’t return in the third book of this book either.
Anyways, from here, Menolly must start again from the bottom of the pecking order and sort of stumble her way up to the top again. This is where the cultural side of things becomes almost intolerable. Everyone here is either profusely apologizing over nothings, or getting profusely offended over nothings. It gets a bit tiresome when every other page is dedicate to someone having their toes stepped on. It’s part of the culture, but it does wear over time.
Menolly eventually manages to make progress on her musical talents despite the mangled wound on her left arm. She rises through the ranks, and makes a real friend that sticks around. Piemur is a boy, probably no older than twelve, but makes up for his young age with his wits. He’s more fun to watch than most of the characters in the second book because he evades the social standards and sticks his nose into everything.
In the middle of this book, another drama goes down between Menolly and a rich-blood named Ponna. This goes on back and forth throughout the story, and ends with Ponna being kicked out of the Hall and Menolly being elevated to a higher rank to prevent her from being forced to leave by Ponna’s uncle. This threat was made, but nothing ever came of the rivalry between these two. No final say was really made, leaving yet another loose thread dangling, unfinished.
By this point Menolly has progressed rapidly and she’s being propped up as “the wave of the future”, which is all well and good… except that we don’t actually see her ever make a big difference with her songs. We’re told that her one song about fire lizards spread like wildfire and that she makes songs that appeal to the average man, but we never get to see a cause and effect change from her influence.
There are some mild hints throughout Dragonsinger about a budding relationship between her and another young harper, but again, I have trouble recalling his name because he wasn’t a very big part of the story.
Throughout this second book, there’s been little mention of Menolly’s family. I was thinking the third would finally circle around to all the strings that had been set up for a finale, but Dragondrums opens with the POV of Piemur, and Menolly is left in the background for the rest of the story. This is where the book really lost me. It was clear from here that the major conflict with her family set up in the first book would not be resolved, nor would her supposed profound effect on the population of Pern. Her vision and the incident of a dragon teleporting into the sun wouldn’t be coming up again, and now Piemur would be taking the reins in a offshoot political drama between factions that had not been previously introduced.
Alright, I’ll try and break down this last one quickly.
Dragondrums focuses it’s time on turning Piemur from voice-cracking singer into a spy for the Harper Hall. There are a couple cool moments early on, especially when he has to hide a sapphire from a rogue dragon rider set on stealing the gems for himself, but aside from that, the plot goes downhill. Although it sets him up to be a spy, his actual spy work is short lived.This plot spins itself up into a kingdom v kingdom rather quickly, but I had no reason to be invested in one group over the other since these factions were just introduced. One of the main points of the conflict between these two groups also revolves around the fire lizards, but the strange part is that the “good guys” want to gives these lizards to the rich, whereas the “bad guys” are giving lizards to all their citizens. Now, maybe I missed something here, but trading your own bought and sold lizards and giving them to your citizens isn’t a great point to make readers root against this kingdom. The bigger point was that this kingdom was trading goods with the south, which were formally exiled sometime back.
Piemur makes a big show when he steals a queen egg from the king’s pot and starts a castle-wide search. He has to hide in some cargo, and is then picked up and transported to another continent. The last half of this story is just about Piemur hatching and caring for a queen fire lizard, leaving behind the plot of being a spy. He lives in the middle of nowhere for several months, adopts an injured calf, meets a pretty girl, and then floats right back into the Master Harper’s arms. It’s… a weird turn of events.
Honestly this whole book is just about the fire lizards, and the characters and plot are there to prop them up. That sounds a bit harsher than I mean it, but I’m not sure how else to say it. Oh, and I forgot one last thing. Remember that weakly hinted budding relationship between Menolly and Sebel? (Yeah, his name is Sebel, I finally remembered it lol). Well… that got weird right at the end. How do I explain this in a non weird way? Short version: their fire lizards got frisky, and because of the telepathic bond between them and their masters, they got frisky too. There was nothing graphic, but the situation in general was… not expected? It felt out of left field with so little romantic build up between the two before hand, not to mention the bizarre animal connection to it all.
I think I understand what the author was trying to accomplish with this book. It was doing a lot to build up the world and some of the major players in Pern. This series is part of a much larger extended collection of stories set in this same world which I haven’t read. The problem is that this was the book’s main purpose, while the personal stories of the characters involved came second. At least, that’s how it came across.
By the end, I didn’t know who the main character was or what the arc of the story was really meant to be. Menolly escaped her abusive family and became a harper, but to what end? She tamed fire lizards, but she wasn’t the first to do so, and had no large impact on this aspect of the story. Her mother, father, and sister still think she’s dead, and her brother doesn’t know where she went even though he’s the kinder one of the lot, and her home Hold hasn’t changed an ounce.
Piemur lost his voice, did little as a spy, and had no conclusive growth for this way or that. The book focused on his attainment of a fire lizard more than anything, which was too bad because he would’ve made for a pretty fun spy.
I know I’ve been more negative about this book than most, but I don’t mean to slam it. It has it’s upsides – the plot just isn’t one of them. The first book really had me going, and I think if it just stuck to those roots more it would’ve had me till the end. The idea to have Piemur working as a spy could’ve been great as well, especially if his fire lizard had ever come in handy.
Individually I’d give Dragonsong close to 4 stars, Dragonsinger close to three and a half, and Dragondrums a 3. I have a couple other Anne McCaffery books on hand that I’d been given many years ago, so I may read those as well. Hopefully they’ll be more consistent than this one was. I liked the general world building that was set up, I liked the institutions that were introduced, and I can only imagine what kind of crazy plots could go down with teleporting dragons thrown into the mix. But, anyway, I feel I’ve ranted more than enough on this review.