Another Review at MyShelf.Com

Dragon Harper
Dragons of Pern

by Anne and Todd McCaffrey



      At last, the wait is over and here is another Pern novel to enjoy.  What makes these books so popular and memorable is the authors’ ability to create a wonderfully real-seeming world populated with well-rounded characters that are easy to care about.  High adventure rubs shoulders with the minutiae of daily life, with all its joys and pains, while new characters take their places along with old friends from other books.  This book follows on from the events in Dragon’s Fire (also reviewed on this site) and picks up the story of young Kindan, overjoyed at being taken on as an apprentice at Harper Hall.  Soon he has a fire lizard of his own, and is giving advice to the Lord Holder’s young daughter Koriana.  But the pair fall in love, and the disparity in their stations means that a marriage is out of the question.  In disgrace, Kindan wonders if all he has worked for has come to nothing.  Then comes the plague...

This is another story set almost five hundred years after the ship made landing, and when Thread is still raining down on Pern.  The old skills are lost, and nothing has yet been found to add a SF sophistication to this mediaeval world.  In a nutshell, it is the Pern we all fell in love with, minus later additions.  Alongside the fantasy of talking dragons and the thrill of reading about another world, these writers never lose sight of the fact that they are writing about human beings, and thus the situations the characters get into are very real.  Kindan has to face down a bully, Kelsa and Nonala are girls in a man’s world, Vaxoram has to come to terms with inadequacy. The plague changes everything and makes adults of teenagers, making many hard decisions necessary.  In short, this is another real page turner that expands on the Pern we know and love as well as continuing the story of Kindan, Cristov and their friends.  May the McCaffreys write many more books about this amazing world.

The Book

Bantam Press (Transworld UK)
1 January 2008
Hardback
9780593055281
Fantasy
More at Amazon.com US|| UK
Excerpt
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The Reviewer

Rachel A Hyde
Reviewed 2008
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© 2008 MyShelf.com