Dragonsblood: A Dragonriders Of Pern Novel (Dragonriders of Pern)

Rating:
Summary: It's a lovely, compelling and thought provoking story
Review: As a long-time Pern fan, I'm going to strongly disagree with some of the reviews posted here. What I love the most about Anne's writing is not the scientific detail of Pern... but the sheer depth and emotions of the story being told. When I read the scene of Masterharper Robintons death in the Dolphins of Pern.... I sob. When I read of the valiant effort of F'nor and Canth in trying to reach the Red Star.... it amazes. The loss of Brekke's dragon. The joy of Menolly singing. The desperate try of Lessa to rid Ruatha of Fax. It goes on and on and on.

In this way, Todd shows that he carries the torch well for, truly, we will all now remember the desperate courage of Arith and Lorana as they tried to save the dragons. The mad attempt to call the dragons home. The sob when Tullea returns Arith's now centuries old buckle to her owner. The foolish arrogrance of D'gan. I love it!

Yes, yes... for those who focus on Pern arcane details, I'm sure you'll find a few bones to pick over. But the characters... the depth of emotions... the joys.. the heartaches... the loves... the fallacies of humanity... it's all there... and it's all good. I, for one, hope to amass yet another collection of McCaffrey first editions.... these from Todd!

Bravo and thank you for giving us yet more great stories to read.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful First Sojourn Into Pern!
Review: As a reader of Pern since Analog's publication of the short story, Weyr Search, in 1967, I've enjoyed the glimpses Anne McCaffrey has given us of Pern and its people. It was great to see that Anne had opened up Pern to another writer, her son, Todd.

Dragonsblood is Todd McCaffrey's first solo foray into the world of Pern.  Dragonsblood gives us new insight into the time at the very start of 3rd Pass, the third time the Red Star gets close enough to Pern for its parasitic "thread" to rain down and threaten to destroy all organic life on the planet. Once again the dragons of Pern, bio-engineered by the original colonists from the indigenous fire lizards, must flame and kill the thread before it reaches the ground.

The Weyrs are preparing for the first threadfall in hundreds of years. Though no dragon or dragonrider alive has ever actually fought thread, they have kept up the traditional drills and, baring a few problems, are as well prepared as they can be. But just before thread is due to fall, the dragons, usually quite hardy, begin to get sick and die from a bacterial infection. The level of medical knowledge available to those of 3rd Pass has so degraded that not much can be done for the dragons. It seems that dragonkind on Pern is doomed. Nevertheless, the dragonriders use all of the resources and knowledge available to them and gallantly fight thread, even though they suffer terrible losses of dragons and riders with each fall.

Woven into this story of the pandemic of the 3rd Pass is a second story line taking place 450 years earlier in Pern's history. The last of those who were children during Landing are now old and dying off. Because of various unforeseen hardships the colonists have faced since coming to the planet, it is obvious that much of the technology they brought with them will be almost entirely lost within the next few generations. But though strange circumstances, it becomes obvious that sometime in Pern's future, the dragons, bio-engineered only a generation ago, would be threatened with extinction and put into question the continued existence of the colony. Those who still have the knowledge necessary to create a solution to the problem, must find a way to teach it to their many-times great grandchildren, as well as preserve the necessary equipment and supplies.

Some story elements might be considered cliché when used by other authors; however, in Dragonsblood, Todd McCaffrey successfully twists and blends these elements in the unique way that makes it a Dragonriders of Pern story. Todd obviously has the intimate understanding of the Pern universe expected of someone who has literally grown up with it. Though mechanically it has some rough areas, Dragonsblood is a very well crafted, fun, and emotionally wrenching Pern story that both those who truly know Pern and those who are new to Pern will enjoy. (Have your tissue box ready.) 

I look forward to continue following the people of 3rd pass in Todd's next Pern novel. I also look forward to reading in the new worlds I'm hoping Todd will give us entirely of his own molding and shaping, in the near future!

(One request: Could you please include a list of characters to help keep track of the who's who in future stories, as we used to get with the earlier Pern novels? It would be much appreciated!)

Rating:
Summary: DIFFERENT VOICES, SAME WORLD
Review: I have read several reviews either lauding Todd McCaffrey's novel, or panning it. Having recently finished DRAGONSBLOOD, I can see why this novel has become a "love-it-or-leave-it" story.

Early on in my reading, it seemed to me that there were numerous continuity errors. According to reader-responses on Todd McCaffrey's official webpage, some of these continuity errors go all the way back to mistakes and slip-ups from Anne McCaffrey's original Pern stories. Whether this is a good reason, or a good cop-out for lackluster source reasearch, I'm not certain.

For my tastes, there were entirely too many characters and dead-end sub-plots throughout the book. Indeed, the entire section dealing with Lorana's ill-fated sea voyage had no bearing on the rest of the book. I got bored meeting so many characters that were ancillary to the storyline. On the other hand, I think there is promise for Lorana, Kindan, M'tal, Salina, Ketan and B'nik to evolve and fill the pages of future novels.

More than anything, I was disappointed that Todd McCaffrey's plot was so redundant. As has been discussed in other reviews the whole "Plague...Paradox-Song...Time-Travel...Psionic Heroine" storyline has become a too-used McCaffrey safety lever. If there are so many problems for the colonists descendents, why don't the dragonriders go back in time to the pre-Thread colony times and prepare their ancestors for what awaits them? Having been forewarned, the tech-savvy colonists could then have concentrated their not insubstantial resources on building technological and industrial centers to aid their descendents. But I digress.

Having finished the book yesterday I thought that if Anne McCaffrey had written this story, her editor would have convieniently lost the manuscript. But Anne didn't write the book, TODD did. Todd McCaffrey is a relative newcomer to the mass-market book game. And while he has several projects under his belt, he has not written for as many years as his mother. I welcome a sequel, or continuation, to DRAGONSBLOOD if only to see how Todd's writing skills will evolve and improve. Case in point, if you compare Anne McCaffrey's decently good DRAGONFLIGHT to the masterpiece that is THE WHITE DRAGON, you will see how she matured as an author and a story teller. While DRAGONSBLOOD is not a good "Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern" story, it is a decent TODD MCCAFFREY story.

Rating:
Summary: WE WANT TODD TO SUCCEED SO BADLY!
Review: I'm afraid I can't agree with the first review on this new book. I love Pern and I so want Todd to carry on the legacy of his mother but he's not there yet. Anyone reviewing this book critically will, I think, have to agree with the following:

1. The characterizations are good.
2. The storyline is intriguing but not developed fully. Way too much time is spent on irrelevant and scientific detail. Seemed like filler to me.
3. This book jumps around so much from time to time and place to place that it's difficult to keep up with who is doing what to whom.
4. Too many characters! There are a startling number of dragons, dragonriders, healers, sailors, assistants, weyr folk, scientists, drummers, bystanders, etc. etc. who enter the story and are never heard from again.
5. Too many tangential stories left dangling. Why all the time spent on facial surgery when nothing every happened? What about all the Iridani (did I spell that correctly?) hints from Wind Blossom without thorough explanation, etc. etc.
6. What was the deal with Talia (the queen rider who suffered from timing it)? Since when do characters living in their own time suffer from timing it? It's the living in the past that causes them to suffer, i.e. F'nor timing it ten years earlier to allow the dragonets to grow up. F'nor suffered while staying in the past--he wasn't a wreck in the present during the period of time that overlapped.

I really, really want Todd to succeed but he's going to have to tighten it up quite a bit to come close to his mother's fascinating creativity.

Rating:
Summary: in the middle tier of Pern books, better than some later one
Review: My theory on lengthy series is they tend to be divided into several tiers of quality: great ones (usually early on), good ones that don't match the passion or excitement of the top ones, adequate ones that serviceably move the grand story along but aren't particularly original or well-written, and the bad ones that were just spit out because series fans would by them. Dragonsblood for the most part falls into the second category, with a few flaws that move it down a bit within that tier.
It isn't such harsh praise to say the book doesn't match the first two series (dragonflight/quest/singer/song/drums, White Dragon) since they were so good, but one does miss the deep characterization, the passion, the originality of those earlier works. It's also not on par with some of the later "good-but-not-great" ones, such as All the Weyrs, but it does a decent job of storytelling within a familiar world.
Unfortunately, one of the flaws is that it's a bit too familiar plot-wise. We've seen much of Dragonsblood's story before: the plague, the race against time for a cure, the use of timing it to heal wounded dragonriders, the girl who can hear all dragons, the intemperate and/or incompetent weyrleader/weyrwoman who threatens the weyr's survival, found technology from the past helping out in the present, and perhaps most egregious, the use of a song from the past to inform the future of what they should be doing. It would have been nice to have been given a more original storyline.
Dragonsblood tracks two time periods, the second generation after original colonization, focusing mostly on Wind Blossom, and 500 turns later, focusing on Lorana. During threadfall, a plague strikes first dragonlizards and then dragons themselves, calling into the question the very survival of the humans on Pern. Without going into how, both time periods race to find a cure. Wind Blossom and others must also figure out a way to get that cure to the future. It's a more compelling and fast-paced plot than most of the later Pern books, and the time switches are handled well for the most part, with little confusion. Some confusion does arise, however, from the sheer number of characters, many of whom seem a bit superfluous. Some judicious editing would have helped here.
The characters range from fully fleshed out ones such as Lorana and Wind Blossom to several who are more shallowly presented and a few who simply appear and disappear both in the text and in memory.
There are a few clumsy attempts to "explain" why things happen as they do in the future, those awkward "so that's why people call them that" moments that often occur in prequel books. Even worse, there are a few times where things seem to contradict earlier, accepted Pern history. The suspension of disbelief at those moments is pretty hard.
The ending has a bit of a deus ex machina feel to it and is greatly burdened by the sudden influx of techno-speak. Here again, it's hard to believe what is happening, as characters in a barely-technological society are suddenly spouting gene theory and actually performing experiments, and doing it all quickly and smoothly. The ending, therefore, pulls the book down a bit in its rating.
In the end, while it has its many problems, Dragonsblood isn't a bad addition to the Pern canon, though it doesn't add much. Since it's better than Dragon's Kin, the previous book and one which McCaffery worked on as well, the trend is towards improvement, which bodes well. I'm not sure there are a lot of Pern stories left to tell (the overly familiar plot in this one gives pause), but with Dragonsblood's improvement over Dragon's Kin, McCaffery junior shows he might be able to handle what ones are left. Recommended for fans of the series, who won't be as disappointed as they've been with others. But for newbies, go back and start with Dragonflight and read in publication order. Then you'll understand why so many people flock to buy even the weaker ones.

Rating:
Summary: No where near his mothers work.
Review: One of the wonderful things about the Pern books is the warm relationship between the dragons, the fire-lizards, and their companions. Somehow this book has lost that relationship. Instead, it spends a lot of time on needless scientific detail, numerous unnecessary characters, and endless storyline repetition. In the last parts of the book, I found myself skimming impatiently through the last chapters so I could get to the end. I too wish Todd great success, but I suggest he search through his mothers previous books to find that wonderful relationship between dragons, fire-lizards and their companions. Not worth the hardcover price, borrow it from the library or wait for the paperback.

Rating:
Summary: Another slide downwards for Pern
Review: Please ignore all but the first review of this particular book. Honestly, this was *not* good work, in a few ways, it was superior to Dragon's Kin, but not by very much. And it spoils more than it helps continuing the story of Pern.

~*Mild Spoiler alert.*~

Anne has made a reputation for not allowing fanfiction to be written (up until very recently) about her world, Pern. Her fear was that people would warp her world in ways she did not want. However, she seems to have allowed Todd to do plenty of warping on his own. And to be honest, I have seen better fanfiction than this book! (Track down Dragonschoice, if you don't belive me.) Where this book mostly fails is in it's treatment of previous canon, storyline and characterization.

Dragonsblood does not follow earlier story canon [Whers *were* an error, *not* a secret back-up plan, meant to look like a mistake]. Years of Anne telling us it was supposed to be a mistake, cannot suddenly be undone by deciding that "No! They weren't a mistake! They're supposed to eat Thread at night! Yeah! Because the air's all thick and stuff, and they fly in teams just like dragons!" Let's forget completely for a moment that: 1. Whers aren't that social (Dragonflight), and have lousy telepathy, so they couldn't really organize themselves anyway. 2. They have stubby, nothing wings that are clipped on top of it (Dragonflight). 3. How does the air get "thick" at night? 4. Anne's said in more than one place that Thread does not fall at night (http(colon)//www(dot)ids(dot)org(dot)au/~annac/dr/drmain/ammsg(dot)html, and Skies of Pern, and if it does, that's what the grubs are for. Not whers that have suddenly developed the ability to fly, and somehow eat Thread without it eating them from the inside out before it dies.

Todd also unfortunately forgets basic details about the very creatures he's writting about: whers have only 2 toes on each foot, not 3, *cannot* fly, and cannot hang about during the day. Experienced Weyrfolk do not suddenly forget that gold dragon eggs are 30% larger than regular eggs, and golden-tinged, so cannot "regular" eggs cannot be confused for gold ones.

And also about the world itself, Tea plants simply didn't take to Pernese soil, they were not lost because of the Crossing (Dragonsdawn), Pern does not have honey, because bees didn't survive the trip (The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern). Forgetting one or two of these things isn't so bad, its the fact that so many of these little facts are wrong and the incorrect statements repeated so much that rankles the mind of anyone who loves the original Anne books.

The storylines are a tangled mess, the jumping back and forth between the first and third Passes makes following the story difficult. Between having a new character being added every few pages and sumarilly forgeting they exist or killing them, leaves little opportunity to empathize with many of the characters or even care much when they do die or dissapear. Many plotlines were started, and nothing was made of them, Todd's editor should've snapped those out when she saw them. It probably would've helped kept the book from being a 400+ page monster if she had. That's disgraceful really, just because the McCaffrey's write-something, doesn't mean it has to go into print. There is such a thing as viciously and heartlessly murdering your darlings in the editing and polishing phases of writting.

Characterization was poor, lacking both in nearly any empathizing qualities or even likability. Wind Blossom was nicely portrayed as a somewhat bitter woman, forever living with the memory of her mother's standards, this created a good area of sympathizing with her, but she has no real redemming qualities to either make her even somewhat likable or able to be seen as anything but a plot device.

Lorana is a Mary Sue character if there ever was one, entirely too sweet and naive for anyone's tolerance, all she wants is to do good for the world, sketching pictues (I take the time now to remind you that at the 3rd Pass, paper was replaced with hides for record keeping, only paid Artists got canvas to paint or draw on), but all those icky-bad people and that yucky-yuck disease just make things so hard for her to do all those lovely sketches that people find so enchanting. Because she's had such a hard life after that plague; "Wait, wasn't there The Big Plague in Moreta? Yeah, but this is another plague. They happen a whole lot, just no one talks about them, for some reason I don't really explain all that well." Like they've never seen a portrait made before Lorana showed up.... She's too damn wishy-washy. And let's not start on the Talent universe infringements: her carisaks (you just couldn't say shoulder bag, could you Todd?), her Damia-style God-like telepathic powers. "She's so strong not only can she talk to other dragons, all of them talking all of the time doesn't seem to drive her out of her mind, and she can toss dragons /between/ to the colony days, and they aren't even hers!" It's nauseating, for once can we have a sona solve problems with a bit of ingenuity? Not all that tossing about of super-powers like they've been doing since Skies of Pern.

Aside from those two, every other character tends to slip through the cracks of one's mind, there's nothing in particular to keep them stuck in your memory. They basically did nothing but be plot fodder, and not even good fodder at that, choking their way down the throat of the reader as they struggled to find the signifigance of naming every single person in the Lower Caverns, and medical tents, even as some of them did only minor things like bringing food in for the main characters to eat, or offering Wind Blossom a cup of klah. Is it really necessary to mention all of those people? When they have absolutely no influence over the storyline or even in the actions of the main chracters?

Dragonsblood is unpolished, sorely needed to be cut by 50 pages, the hanging plots needed to be tied up, and for Faranth's sake Todd, Read ALL of your mother's books first! Get your facts straight, and make post-it notes of them somewhere where you can see them to remember that whers have two toes, that Pern doesn't have honey, that whers were an error and no amount of covering your ears and saying "nah-nah" won't unmake that statement, and for all of those little things that ruin the atmosphere of the world we've all come to know and love.



Rating:
Summary: A great Pern novel
Review: When the colonists landed on Pern, they didn't know that the red star would align with the planet every two hundred and fifty years. When that event happens, spores from the red star fall onto Pern destroying anything organic in its path. To combat this problem, geneticists changed fire lizards into telepathic dragons that bond with a human; together they unite to fight spores or thread as it is now called in 507 years after the initial landing of the spaceship.

In AL 507, Lorana sends her fire lizards away when she thinks she is dying, but she is saved and brought to Bendon Weyr where she bonds with a hatchling dragonet Arith. A plague infects the dragons killing many including Arith just when thread is coming. Arith and Lorana's two fire lizards go back to 42 AL where geneticist Wind Blossom concludes that the three visitors come from Bendan Weyr in the future. She devises a plan to help her descendents battle the deadly dragon killer plague if the future people can interpret the clues she left behind to save them.

This is the first solo Pern story not written by the immortal Anne McCaffrey, but her son who obviously inherited the writing gene as readers will not be able to tell who wrote the novel without reading the cover. Two women living centuries apart work to find a cure to save the dragons and ultimately their world. There is plenty of action scenes especially when dragons and their human rider battle thread, but it is the strong characterizations especially the grieving Lorana who can communicate with any dragon while reminded of the loss of her Arith to the plague that make this a worthy entry in the long running series.

Harriet Klausner



Rating:
Summary: Great start for the heir to the Weyr
Review: Young Mr. McCaffrey has taken the reins from his mother, Anne McCaffrey, and done a really good job with this new book. It's still a bit "loose" as one other reviewer noted, but the story is a solid one. I too had some trouble keeping up with the jumps from past to present to future and so forth, but the Pernese worked hard to solve the problems, and showed there is always hope.
Keep up the work, Mr. McCaffrey.