Dragonflight (Dragonriders of Pern Trilogy, #1) (Pern, #16)

by Anne McCaffrey

HOW CAN ONE GIRL SAVE AN ENTIRE WORLD?

To the nobles who live in Benden Weyr, Lessa is nothing but a ragged kitchen girl. For most of her life she has survived by serving those who betrayed her father and took over his lands. Now the time has come for Lessa to shed her disguise—and take back her stolen birthright.

But everything changes when she meets a queen dragon. The bond they share will be deep and last forever. It will protect them when, for the first time in centuries, Lessa’s world is threatened by Thread, an evil substance that falls like rain and destroys everything it touches. Dragons and their Riders once protected the planet from Thread, but there are very few of them left these days. Now brave Lessa must risk her life, and the life of her beloved dragon, to save her beautiful world. . . .

• ISBN10: 034527749X
• ISBN13: 9780345277497
• Publish Date: 12 October 1978 (first published 12 July 1973)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Del Rey Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 337
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Nobody was more surprised than me to find the beloved, influential, and groundbreaking Dragonriders of Pern series is science-fiction? Pern is a moon, and the Pernese are humanoids; dragons are a highly specialized, domesticated breed of the moon’s creatures.

So yeah. Explanation for dragons is that they are actually alien creatures. I don’t know why this shocks me so much, but it makes sense. I’ve just never seen dragons as part of sci-fi! It took me a few minutes to shake that off. Because, yes, this is my first read of Dragonflight and the Dragonriders of Pern in general. And as someone who loves dragon stories, this is inexcusable.

The writing is… a little stiff for me, if I’m being honest. This may be in part because of the narrator – Dragonflight was recorded thirty years ago, and the audiobook is a cleaned up version. The recording is good, but it’s read in such a way it felt it was a book being read out loud, rather than a radio play like most modern audiobooks. And, because of that, it was a bit more difficult to listen to.

Again, maybe this is just the audiobook, but I felt the plot jumped all over the place. One minute they were recruiting (read: kidnapping almost?) a new Weyrwoman, the next there were concerns over food shortages, and finally there was an attack, I guess, and thwarting of which required impossible time travel by a rookie to amass experience warriors. This is a very short book, and a lot happened plot-wise that made the whole thing go very quickly, but not always in a good way.

The length of the book caused it to suffer in multiple areas. The world building was good in the beginning, where there was an explanation of dragons and how they came to be. It was a bit tacky, but it was effective. Everything else in Dragonflight relied on the reader’s suspension of disbelief and while, as a sci-fi/fantasy reader, I expect to do a bit of that… but it required lengths that I thought pushed the line. The time travel thing annoyed me most, because the explanation for it was weak at best and the consequences mentioned but never really… experienced? The consequences that were experienced were easily thwarted. Just… generally unsatisfying in that way.

Consequences were always thwarted, by the way. Dragonflight is one of those books where the characters get out of every impossible pinch with ease. Aggravating.

I never got a good feel for the world, either. I couldn’t picture it in my head because there were almost no descriptive passages. You can get a little feel for culture, but it’s not… great. It’s in quick little political asides.

The characters were a mess.

Yes, even Lessa.

All the characters were shallow and changeable and seemed to carry only the most extreme emotions. I think McCaffrey was trying to create romance between Lessa and F’lar and it was, at best, stiff, and at worst disgusting, sexist, and criminal. Lessa’s essentially raped and the characters get aroused when their dragons are aroused like “oh no not my fault blame my dragon” and it’s just… it’s so cringy. I get that this book was written in 1968, I really do, and the fact that Lessa is riding forth as a Strong Female Protagonist is amazing… but… I just… there’s no reason for this? It’s a long series, so I’m sure the character grow (right? I hope?) but at this stage, there’s very little reason to be attached to any of them, and that’s the nicest, most objective way I can put it.

If I’d read this book when I was younger – fifth or sixth grade – I think a lot of the stuff that bothered me now would have gone over my head and I’d be drawn in by the dragons and the female lead. Unfortunately, I’m entering the series with zero nostalgia and a keen sense of exactly how often F’lar shakes Lessa and I’m… not impressed. Both not impressed and not interested. I do get that there are classics that we all love despite any problematic elements and how very much they are subjects of the time they were written, and I won’t judge all the people out there who love Dragonflight for their attachment to the series. It’s impossible to deny how influential these books were to the growth of dragon-fantasy, and for that, I can begrudge the series a little respect.

But I’m deeply uninterested in picking up book two.

[ladygrey]

I'm a little bit disappointed that I didn't find this book when I was a kid and read it then. Because I think I would have really enjoyed it and reread it and it would have become a part of my lexicon beside [a:Robin McKinley|5339|Robin McKinley|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1314406026p2/5339.jpg] and [a:J.R.R. Tolkien|656983|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1199863358p2/656983.jpg] and [a:C.S. Lewis|1069006|C.S. Lewis|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1211981595p2/1069006.jpg].

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it as an adult, I totally did. The world is well crafted and the characters are interesting, even when Lessa's obstinate she isn't obnoxious. It's surprisingly mature and also the plot was able to surprise me. It was refreshing for the story to not play out the way I was expecting.

It's also interesting to read it for the first time now, not as an adult but in the midst of a YA explosion on the market, full of paranormal books that are predictable and engaging. Comparatively, [a:Anne McCaffrey|26|Anne McCaffrey|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1323715139p2/26.jpg]'s writing is smart but also more cerebral than emotional. It's not detached necessarily, like some books I've read recently. But she really doesn't delve into the emotions of the characters or tell a particularly emotional story the way modern day YA writers are wont to do. Most of the time when a story lacks emotion I find it less interesting, which is why it's interesting that I didn't with this one. Maybe because it was written in a different time, it didn't feel like anything was absent - it was just a different kind of story.

[Metaphorosis Reviews]

4 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary:

The rightful heir to Ruatha Hold, hiding in plain sight from its tyrannical conqueror, is friends only with the Hold’s small, dragon-like watch-wher. When true dragons and their riders appear unexpectedly, she seizes the moment to try to win back her heritage, and finds something else entirely.

Review:

I picked up daughter Gigi McCaffrey’s first Pern book recently on NetGalley (cumbersomely subtitled Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern), and decided I should go back to the original before reading it. I’m glad I did. Dragonflight
was my introduction to McCaffrey and Pern, and I loved it as much as everyone else did. Determinedly science fantasy, Pern, with its pernicious and deadly falling Thread, is a world carefully crafted with just enough science to be acceptable (the baleful Red Star is a wandering planetoid with an elliptical orbit), but not so much as to make you think too hard (wait, how do those massive dragons manage to fly?).

I’d forgotten just how much is crammed into this first book; it has a lot that I thought was explored in later books of the series, which means it moves along at a pretty rapid pace – definitely adventure territory. I’d also forgotten (or not, in my youth, noticed) just how … old-fashioned some of the roles are. Lessa, the feisty, spirited protagonist, is nonetheless in many ways subservient to the leading man. And this is mostly a story about elites. There’s at least one substantial plot hole involving the serving staff, and mostly they don’t get much of a look-in. The economy is borderline gruesome, and the books avoid looking at it as much as possible.

Despite those weaknesses, this is a fun book. The characters (human and dragon) are interesting, the ideas are fresh, and the action is exciting. Reading this again for the first time in two or three decades reminds me why I liked the series (and some of McCaffrey’s other work) in the first place.
If you haven’t read this, someone has doubtless recommended it, and you should follow their advice. If you thought ‘eh, dragons in space? sounds tired’, it’s not. This is one the original dragons in space books, and it deserves its place as a classic.