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uranaishi's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Death of parent, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Pregnancy, Sexism, Sexual violence, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Death, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Misogyny
Minor: Child abuse, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Grief, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Rape, and Body shaming
foxwish's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
Heir to Ruatha, Lessa, wants her kingdom back from invader Fax. Dragonman F'lar wants a woman to bond with a female dragon because they need more dragons and dragonmen. The two are initially very compelling characters, Lessa is focused entirely on revenge and is smart enough to have kept herself hidden at Ruatha for 10 years, F'lar is evidently a good leader and extremely calculating.
The early chapters did an excellent job teaching me about the politics and world itself. But the more I saw of F'lar and Lessa the more I disliked them, I was initially rooting for them to learn to trust each other but F'lar loses all his charisma as he is clearly abusing Lessa to the point where she appears to have a panic attack about returning to him.
Lessa seems like she might've been considered a strong female character at the time of release, but she, like all of the characters including F'lar, ends up being reduced to being a purely arrogant character. The sexism she has to deal with is dreadful and there are only 3 other female characters in this book I could name, so Lessa gets points for rebelling against her treatment.
The dragons are great and the threat of the "Threads" and the main problem of the Weyr seemed like it wouldn't be solved within the very first book..However, it is! In the space of 30 pages Lessa solves the incredibly complex problem with absolutely no issues convincing anyone! She convinced 1800 dragonmen and their dragons to abandon their lives 400 years in the past and come to the future with her and they happily do this because "they are bored". She and all the other characters seem to be entirely unaware that this means she herself has caused the very issue she was trying to solve. The plot becomes laughably bad towards the end, so much so I can hardly believe I was enjoying this book at the beginning.
On top of that, since the main hook and problem of this book has been solved I don't see any reason to read the following book. Surely now they've increased their forces 9x they can defeat the threads. "Threads" aren't a very interesting villain and I really don't care about how they are defeated enough to try reading the next book. I was extremely surprised the storyline with Fax didn't last longer because he was a much more interesting antagonist.
The early chapters did an excellent job teaching me about the politics and world itself. But the more I saw of F'lar and Lessa the more I disliked them, I was initially rooting for them to learn to trust each other but F'lar loses all his charisma as he is clearly abusing Lessa to the point where she appears to have a panic attack about returning to him.
Lessa seems like she might've been considered a strong female character at the time of release, but she, like all of the characters including F'lar, ends up being reduced to being a purely arrogant character. The sexism she has to deal with is dreadful and there are only 3 other female characters in this book I could name, so Lessa gets points for rebelling against her treatment.
The dragons are great and the threat of the "Threads" and the main problem of the Weyr seemed like it wouldn't be solved within the very first book..However, it is! In the space of 30 pages Lessa solves the incredibly complex problem with absolutely no issues convincing anyone!
On top of that, since the main hook and problem of this book has been solved I don't see any reason to read the following book. Surely now
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Physical abuse, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, and Rape
Moderate: Pregnancy, Confinement, and Mental illness
polarbbp's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia, Rape, Sexism, Gaslighting, Kidnapping, Domestic abuse, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Misogyny, and Pregnancy
erebus53's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
My mother put me onto these books and I knew the premise of the world but had never actually got around to reading them for myself until recently. I got the "searing spore-threads fall from the sky and need to be cleared by dragon mounted riders before the spores land and carnage ensues".. but now I understand why this series is known for having a convoluted timeline. Timespace teleporting dragons.
Set on Pern, a planet that is an abandoned human colony, we have a moderately low-tech setting with its own distinct flora and fauna. Having read the Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums books I'm now wondering which order I should read the other titles in! Despite being first published in 1968, I was interested to see that the language used in the writing was still pretty modern in feel. I wonder if this is because of the setting being pseudo-medieval; it's a lot easier to age "modern" and "futuristic" settings by how prominent cigarettes are and how clunky the tech and attitudes toward it feel.
I enjoyed the story of a woman who has had hardships but is no saint. She can be impulsive and messes up frequently and is very stubborn, in ways that male characters in fantasy have often been allowed to get away with unchallenged. It's refreshing to see someone powerful and self-directed, and interesting to see her being sneaky and under-handed while still basically likeable. She is powerful but gets overwhelmed in utterly overwhelming situations, and this humanises her quite a bit.
I can see how Anne McCaffrey has been really influential in fantasy writing. Her basic sci-fi sensibilities underpin a fantasy that is immersive and believable. The magic of it is mysterious and we get a sense that we are experiencing something that is not what we know, but only because we haven't learned enough yet. This is key to magical realism that really grabs me.. (and thinking on that I can see why books like Thief's Magic by Trudi Canavan really caught my attention). It's internally consistent.
Looking forward to reading more of these as I get hold of them!
Set on Pern, a planet that is an abandoned human colony, we have a moderately low-tech setting with its own distinct flora and fauna. Having read the Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums books I'm now wondering which order I should read the other titles in! Despite being first published in 1968, I was interested to see that the language used in the writing was still pretty modern in feel. I wonder if this is because of the setting being pseudo-medieval; it's a lot easier to age "modern" and "futuristic" settings by how prominent cigarettes are and how clunky the tech and attitudes toward it feel.
I enjoyed the story of a woman who has had hardships but is no saint. She can be impulsive and messes up frequently and is very stubborn, in ways that male characters in fantasy have often been allowed to get away with unchallenged. It's refreshing to see someone powerful and self-directed, and interesting to see her being sneaky and under-handed while still basically likeable. She is powerful but gets overwhelmed in utterly overwhelming situations, and this humanises her quite a bit.
I can see how Anne McCaffrey has been really influential in fantasy writing. Her basic sci-fi sensibilities underpin a fantasy that is immersive and believable. The magic of it is mysterious and we get a sense that we are experiencing something that is not what we know, but only because we haven't learned enough yet. This is key to magical realism that really grabs me.. (and thinking on that I can see why books like Thief's Magic by Trudi Canavan really caught my attention). It's internally consistent.
Looking forward to reading more of these as I get hold of them!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pregnancy, Gore, Sexual assault, Classism, Death of parent, Grief, Blood, Colonisation, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Violence, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexism
Moderate: Classism, Mental illness, Kidnapping, Bullying, and Toxic relationship
swampmonster's review against another edition
I really wanted to like this book - the setting is great! Scifi dragons, hell yeah! But the best way I can describe this book is that it just had a negative attitude. Was it misogynistic? Very. But the loathing present in the text towards women (or, at least, all other women, not the protagonist, she's different) wasn't even the end of it. I felt like the author just generally hated people. Most characters were written as shitheads, and all the characters agreed that each other character was a shithead, and they hated each other. The male love interest self-describes as a rapist, I mean, Jesus Christ! However, I was fully prepared to gut it out and finish this book, until time travel came into it. That was the last straw.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny, Rape, and Sexism
Minor: Pregnancy and Miscarriage
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