The Dragonriders of Pern: Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This collected volume contains the first three of the Pern novels, and its a great way to get into this highly regarded series. It appears to be high fantasy when you start, but as the series goes on the Science Fiction aspects become clearer.
Dragonflight:
This is the first novel in a classic series, and various books in the series have own a bucketful of awards. This novel reads like a fantasy, and you think that is what it all is about until later in the series when it becomes a science fiction theme. Dragons in this case are winged beasts who can breathe fire and burn the “thread”, a deadly enemy that periodically falls from the sky. Lessa, a young lady, has certain mental powers that she puts to work getting revenge on the people who invaded her family’s domain, and tries to use those powers on the Dragonriders when they come around. This brings her to their attention, and she become a Dragonrider herself. While I like it a lot (and so do many others when you look at the awards McCaffrey earned), I would not recommend it to someone who does not enjoy fantasy. The science fiction aspects do not come out until later in the series.
Dragonquest:
The Science Fiction aspects begin to peek though here in the second novel of the series. But the main focus is on conflict between the Oldtimers, the Dragonriders who were brought forward in time to help deal with the threat from the thread, and the contemporary Dragonriders. So it is mostly a generational conflict, but it does help move the story along. The science fiction aspect enters when they consider the possibility of trying to eliminate the thread at its source, which is another planet in the solar system.
The White Dragon:
This is the third novel in the Dragonriders of Pern series, and it was nominated for a Hugo award and placed third in the Locus award for Best Novel. Back in the first novel, Dragonflight, Lessa was fighting against the people who took over her family’s domain. But as a consequence of that fight, a young man named Jaxom becomes the Lord Holder of that domain (called Ruatha Hold). Normally a Lord Holder would stick to administering their domain and stay out of the affairs of dragons and their riders, but he manages to impress (i.e. bond with) a very unusual white dragon who has an ability to always navigate through time.
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