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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
Fully admit that I'm way above the recommended audience age, which likely formed my low rating. Basically, I had higher expectations that weren't met.
I should say that Anne McCaffrey and her Dragonriders of Pern are what got me into reading Science Fiction and Fantasy. So these books have a special place in my heart. That being said, some of them have not held up very well with a re-read. Thankfully, this one did!
The Harper Hall trilogy books are aimed at young adults, but can be enjoyed by adults as well. This first book is about Menolly, a girl who has a gift with music, but can't express it because of where she lives. Her father and mother won't stand for it, and after various degrading episodes she decides to leave and live on her own. Along the way she discovers the firelizards, creatures that most people believe to be a myth. She does eventually meet up with Masterharper Robinton, who tells her that her dream of becoming a harper isn't just wishful thinking.
I simply loved this book during my re-read, and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to enter McCaffrey's world of Pern.
The Harper Hall trilogy books are aimed at young adults, but can be enjoyed by adults as well. This first book is about Menolly, a girl who has a gift with music, but can't express it because of where she lives. Her father and mother won't stand for it, and after various degrading episodes she decides to leave and live on her own. Along the way she discovers the firelizards, creatures that most people believe to be a myth. She does eventually meet up with Masterharper Robinton, who tells her that her dream of becoming a harper isn't just wishful thinking.
I simply loved this book during my re-read, and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to enter McCaffrey's world of Pern.
Another re-read. Love Menolly and her fire lizards!
Menolly is such a strong female character. I love her story.
This book, the 3rd in the Dragonriders of Pern series, continues to tackle the conflict between the old and the new, this time looking at attitudes towards women. Menolly clearly has a talent for music, and the Harper has delighted in this. When he dies suddenly her parents grudgingly allow her to do the teaching that the youngsters require, while waiting for the new Harper to arrive. However, she must not deviate from the traditional.
Music won't leave her alone, and Menolly slips up. What follows leads us through emotions of anger, shame, misery, courage, determination - all within an exciting story of dragons and fire-lizards and Thread falling.
Music won't leave her alone, and Menolly slips up. What follows leads us through emotions of anger, shame, misery, courage, determination - all within an exciting story of dragons and fire-lizards and Thread falling.
This trilogy fills me with joy. I read it 2 times when I was younger and enjoyed it just as much as an adult.
I have not read this recently, but have reread them several times over the years. Part of my favorite Pern series.
I loved the Pern books as a young teen, then eventually fell out of love with them, in part because the author's pretty bizarre views on sex and sexuality became more and more clear. But I found this in my bookshelf and decided to revisit Pern.
I think what surprised me this time around was how annoyed I was by the basically pro-feudal worldview of the books. To summarize the backstory of Pern in brief, every 250 years alien spores called Thread fall from a passing meteor onto the planet, so the Terran settlers bred dragons to ride and burn the Thread out of the sky and established a feudal system where all the farms and fisheries functioned to provide tribute to the dragonriders. However, through a quirk of orbits Thread failed to fall one time, so as the first series begins it's been almost 500 years without any need for dragons, and the feudal system has kind of started to fall apart as people decide Thread is a legend. Of course, then it comes back and all those ignorant farmers realize how terribly wrong they were and learn proper respect for the dragonriders again.
(You can see that as an adult my sympathies kind of lie with the people who break their backs to maintain a ravenous standing army that's only needed every 200 or so years, but the basic Pern narrative ---as I remember it--is very much Crude Stupid Rural Folks versus Sophisticated Charming Elites.)
Re-reading it, it's not a huge mystery why teen-aged me would enjoy a book about a sensitive, misunderstood, brilliant girl whose community is too hidebound, sexist, and plodding to recognize how amazing she is; a girl who through pluck and ingenuity finally finds her rightful place in a community of creative, intelligent people who affirm that she's brilliant. It's a very fun wish-fulfillment romp at that level!
I think what surprised me this time around was how annoyed I was by the basically pro-feudal worldview of the books. To summarize the backstory of Pern in brief, every 250 years alien spores called Thread fall from a passing meteor onto the planet, so the Terran settlers bred dragons to ride and burn the Thread out of the sky and established a feudal system where all the farms and fisheries functioned to provide tribute to the dragonriders. However, through a quirk of orbits Thread failed to fall one time, so as the first series begins it's been almost 500 years without any need for dragons, and the feudal system has kind of started to fall apart as people decide Thread is a legend. Of course, then it comes back and all those ignorant farmers realize how terribly wrong they were and learn proper respect for the dragonriders again.
(You can see that as an adult my sympathies kind of lie with the people who break their backs to maintain a ravenous standing army that's only needed every 200 or so years, but the basic Pern narrative ---as I remember it--is very much Crude Stupid Rural Folks versus Sophisticated Charming Elites.)
Re-reading it, it's not a huge mystery why teen-aged me would enjoy a book about a sensitive, misunderstood, brilliant girl whose community is too hidebound, sexist, and plodding to recognize how amazing she is; a girl who through pluck and ingenuity finally finds her rightful place in a community of creative, intelligent people who affirm that she's brilliant. It's a very fun wish-fulfillment romp at that level!
Read this -- I think a few times -- many years ago and remembered loving it, so it's nice to discover that holds up really well! So well, I've put the next book on hold to follow Menolly's adventures at the Harper Hall.
I haven't read this or any of the Pern books in years and initially, it took me some time to get back into it, but once I did, I was hooked until I finished. I'm looking forward to revisiting the rest of this trilogy!