A review by rhganci
Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey

4.0

Jumping ahead 7 Turns, I felt like this book settled me into the continued plot very comfortably. She became a bit longer-winded in this volume, spending a bit more time with character’s thoughts and reflections of events, but only once or twice did I feel distracted from the story and the danger of the Threadfall. F’nor takes a centerpiece in this novel, and it felt natural, being totally separate from the first book, which centered on F’lar and Lessa (both of whom appear in this book), who have settled in nicely to their role as dragonrider celebrities, so to speak. The conflict with the Oldtimers was a natural permutation of what would happen when people 400 years different attempt to do the same thing, and I was surprised at some of the sweet knife fights in these books. I was thinking I should really feel the absence of swordplay more in these books, but the way the world is set up really seems to not need swords and sorcery—more than a fantasy, these are works of hard science fiction, dealing with the colonization of planets and celestial occurrences. There are also some interesting themes dealing with human history and the propensity to forget useful, helpful, and even necessary things, with a hint of critique on what seemed like revisionist history—the value of the grubs being totally forgotten and overlooked. It was pretty good, though I missed the “training” scenes from the previous book. I want to ride a dragon—maybe a white one? I’m glad that the third book deals with that aspect of the story—a white dragon sounds awesome.