I love anything Pern but the series with Todd McCaffrey has some twists that seem inconsistant with his mother's portrayal of the citizens of Pern. Dragon's Time has carried the story to some interesting places but this generation of riders are not as conservative as they are referenced to in la...
I can't tell you how many times I've read this series. Just read this title again, and it still doesn't disappoint. Telepathic dragons, strong female characters, great relationships, and the Harpers' guild and music as a strong guiding force. What could be better? In hindsight, I still enjoy read...
***Spoiler alert***Dragon's Time by Todd & Anne McCaffreyI've been a McCaffrey fan since the 80s and recently reread the entire series. She's one of the few authors I've seen successfully depict a near-Utopian society. That said, I don't think she could have had any input into this awful, awful...
I loved this and of course it had special meaning as it was the last Pern novel that Anne McCaffrey wrote before she passed away. She wrote this with her son and her legacy to her son and daughter was that they alone could continue the Pern stories. A pretty clear picture of surviving on an outpo...
Changelings is the result of a collaboration: Anne McCaffrey (of The Dragonriders of Pern fame) and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (The Healer's War). Although both are fine writers, I found this book less than the talents of either, rather than even just the sum of their abilities. The story takes pl...
I have a collection of short stories by McCaffrey, but I realized when I got it down to reread and review it that one was a sequel to this book. So I searched around until I found a copy, which took longer than I expected.First, the table of contents:The Ship Who SangThe Ship Who MournedThe Ship...
From Publishers Weekly The McCaffreys' second fire-breathing collaboration (after 2003's Dragon's Kin) again proves why these fabled dragons still cast a spell. Pellar, a mute Apprentice Harper; Halla, a homeless girl; and Cristov, a miner's son, learn invaluable life lessons as the planet Pern...
SUMMARY:The Shongili twins, Ronan and Murel, accompany their friend Marmie on her luxury space craft Piaf to rescue their friend Ke-ola's family from an uninhabitable planet. They arrive to find the planet in the midst of a terrible meteor storm and when they go down to the surface find that the ...
Irene Teasey came to Ireland to claim an unexpected interitance from an aunt she had never met ... a legacy of land, a sprawling house, cottages with tenants, and even a horse ... more than she had dared hope for. life. from an abusive relationship. She will find loyal friends, her extended Irish...
The concept of this book was great - the lives of those on the margins as Threadfall begins. The execution of it - not so great. The book opens with snapshots of quite a few different characters. The impression is that the story is going to follow each of them, but in truth some of them turn out ...
Lately I have had a craving for Pern.I remember that someone from Baen's Bar recommended the series to me because of my love of Mercedes Lackey books years ago.They told me I had to read this series if I loved dragons! How could I not give it a read after that.Sadly, I was never able to finish th...
Author: Anne McCaffrey First published: June 1978Length: 319 pages, 7042 kindle locationsThis book has posed me a challenge to review. For much of the time, I didn't like "The White Dragon". I like the ideas. I like the extensive World development. I like the overlap of characters and events from...
I was really delighted to be starting in on another Anne McCaffery book after too long away. As a child, I sort of looked down my nose at McCaffery's escapist simplicity, but as an adult, I find I love it (at least, as a change of pace), and I no longer believe that grittiness necessarily equate...
I picked this book out on Tuesday from my Books to Be Read bookcases (I have two such bookcases, both in the bathroom), as a book that I could read in about three days; and it admirably fit that requirement. It is also a pretty good fantasy book, as the fifth book in the series of books by Anne M...
Partnership is about Nancia. On her first trip, she transports several young people from high families. Unfortunately, they are all corrupt and she overhears their plans, but is persuaded that she shouldn't have, since she didn't identify herself as a brain ship. Her first brawn happens to be ext...
Power Lines by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is the second book set in the Petaybee Universe. This book continues from where the last book leads off however the company has caused more problems again. While Dr. Fiske agrees with the natives that the planet is sentient the view is...
Things you find while cleaning out your closet. While I truly love the Talent series, the Tower books (taking place around 300 years after the end of the Talent series) are a dicier bet. "The Rowan" I'm still generally good with, but the quality slides after that, just recycling without end. "Lyo...
Warning: I am in love with the books by Anne McCaffrey, and have been for over 20 years. I do re-read my favourites often, a few at a time, so there will be more reviews in the next few days. Master Harper Robinton plays a big part in most of the books in this series, so his own history is always...
This series just doesn't have the charm that the original Acorna series had. I don't know if it's because we're not discovering as many different worlds and cultures or if it's due to having Khorii as a main character, but there's definitely something missing. However, for fans of the series, thi...
While I do appreciate the fact that at no point in this book did Kris get herself drunk and knocked up by someone other than her partner, I nevertheless wonder why McCaffrey wrote this book. Freedom's Challenge ended with an openness that certainly made another sequel possible, but it also seemed...
When The Rowan was three years old, she lost her family in a mudslide. She was only spared because her mother had left her in the hopper, while she ran through the rain to get some groceries inside. It had been raining for weeks, and no one knew, the mud avalanche was building. Not one precog had...
Those who have followed my blog for a while, know that I am a huge Anne McCaffrey fan, and that her Dragonriders of Pern are my favourite series. I have re-read Dragonsdawn for the umpteenth time now, and was surprised that I had not yet written a review about it.This book explains how the humans...
For more than thirty years, Pern has conjured visions of brave men and women mounted upon the backs of dragons. As anyone knows who has been touched by the storytelling magic of Anne McCaffrey, to read of the exotic world of Pern is to inhabit it—and to experience its extraordinary dragons is to ...
The Death of Sleep by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye is the second book in the Planet Pirates series set in the Ireta Universe. The main character in this book is Lunzie Mespila medic who is mentioned in each of the previous three books in this universe. This book deals with the backstory whi...
Many a woman who found her love of reading early will fondly reminisce about her ‘horse period’ – when she read anything she could get her hands on that had to do with horses, such as the Marguerite Henry books (Misty of Chincoteague!) and Black Beauty. There’s a smaller and more select group tha...
I think it’s hard for modern readers to imagine the cultural landscape back before fantasy became commonplace and widely accepted. Back when McCaffrey wrote this, before Star Wars, there was very little presence of fantasy in pop culture. Sure, there was plenty of good fantasy to read if you knew...
Released in 1979, Dragondrums promised to round out the "classical" Pern books, but fails to reach that mark. The book failed to find me when first published and failed again to reach me this time around.The book itself tries to do too many things at once, often rushes through scenes and events, ...
Each year, the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America(r) bestow the Nebula Awards to authors whose exemplary fiction represents the most thought-provoking and entertaining work the genre has to offer. Nebula Awards Showcase collects the year's most preeminent science fictio...
There was a Mrdini scout present when in the first book, the mind merge of all the Talents destroyed the enormous Hiver sphere. For the first time in centuries, they found another race that could defeat their enemy without losing lives. When the Mrdini battle a Hiver sphere, it takes many, many l...
Oh my god. So I thought the other books were full of weird rape and slut-shaming, but this one is the worst one yet. WTF, McCaffrey.It takes some special talent to write a sex scene between two people who are in love and want to have sex, and somehow make it actually rape.This entire scene betwee...
This book takes place years later than the Harper Hall trilogy. AIVAS has been discovered again at Landing, on the Southern continent. It has promised to help to rid the world of Thread forever, and is educating the population to its purposes. It needs to learn the specifics of the Dragons powers...
Oddly apt for a winter read, this book centers on Major Yanaba Maddock, a disabled veteran, sent to the icy planet Petaybee to die, but also on one last mission, to spy on the locals and find out what is really going on there. This book has a naive sweetness to it. It reminds me of early McCaffer...
I like Anne McCaffrey’s works because of her straightforward, no-nonsense writing style, and To Ride Pegasus definitely met my expectations. The four short stories included in To Ride Pegasus are very fast-paced and driven by the storyline, and McCaffrey created clear-cut protagonists and antagon...
So the Singer series continues with Killashandra having to go off planet and she succeeds to aggravate me even more as an egotistical drama queen with her over the top Self-Sacrifice(la faint)by leaving the love of her life to forget her and going of planet on a job. The whole section of her losi...
Here there be dragons . . . Since the first unforgettable appearance of Pern's remarkable dragons and their brave human riders in the novella Weyr Search, winner of a Hugo award in 1968, millions of readers the world over have thrilled to Anne McCaffrey's bestselling saga of men, women, and dra...
Although the blurb really doesn't give any clues beyond what was pretty much established in book one, this really was a much better book, structure and story-wise. More things happened, there were clearer goals and objectives, and, after a slowish start, it was paced better.However, there are two...
I enjoyed this book by Anne McCaffrey. I read some of the reviews written about it before deciding to read the book. I had read several of her books, and though the few reviews I read were not particularly positive, I felt I would read ALL THE WEYRS OF PERN in any case. But two points mentioned...
Black Horses for the King is an Arthurian novel, but focuses mostly on an original character, Galwyn, as he joins Arthur's men and helps to look after his horses, and eventually becomes involved in making prototype horse shoes for them.It's a little odd for an Arthurian novel, as it has nothing t...
I will admit that I have not always been a fan of the two authors. Too often I find McCaffrey slightly dull, and I've had similar difficulties enjoying Lackey's work. However, this book is excellent and a credit to the powers of collaboration. Whatever faults there may be amongst the two authors,...
Nimisha’s grew up on Vega III in an aristocratic society where she had the best of everything. On her father’s tragic passing she is left in charge of her father’s Ship Yard to everyone’s surprise. She builds a space ship called the Mark 5 and takes it on a solo test run for what was supposed t...
The breathtaking saga of the second generation begins! It is difficult growing up in the shadow of heroes revered throughout the galaxy. But that is the lot of young Khorii -- daughter of the legendary Acorna and her lifemate Aari -- who must now follow her own destiny through a fantastic univers...
Khorii, the rebellious daughter of the near-mythic Acorna and her lifemate, Aari, has followed in Acorna's footsteps leading their people from danger, but the pressure to succeed and fulfill a legacy is tremendous.For the deadly foe that has ravaged the known worlds and weakened even her famous p...
Setting: the planets of Brerevi and Botany, I'm not sure of the time-line, but it was contemporary to the time it was written, I think.Genre: Sci/fi, adventure, a touch of romanceHave you ever read a book by an author you spent your adolescence with and the "new" book turns out to be less than yo...
To Ride Pegasus, Damia, The Rowan, Pegasus in Flight, and Pegasus in Space, Anne McCaffrey - I was lending a couple of these to a friend, and was struck by the urge to re-read them first. They have, as I'd expected, been visited by the Suck Fairy, but not as badly as some of her others; I still q...
Like the other two books in this trilogy, this series is "comfort food" for my mind. I know the stories, or am at least relatively familiar with them if it has been a number of years since I last read them, and I tend to turn to books in this category when I am not feeling well or just not wantin...
Originally published on my blog here in December 2001.This latest Pern novel reads as though it is meant to round off the series. It is one of the most successful series of novels in science fiction, both long running and consistently high selling. The general trend has been for the novels to bec...
I was in some ways impressed and tickled by Acorna, and in other ways unimpressed and chagrined. Being an avid reader of Anne McCaffrey since I was in junior high school, there are many traits that I’ve come to enjoy in her writing: tying mythical beasts and the paranormal to modern and future se...
Ms. McCaffrey again demonstrates why a good editor is so important. They take out the false starts, clunky sentences, and silly ideas. They also check for inconsistencies in the story and can give the author some guidance on getting the various parts of the story to fit together seamlessly. It is...
Amazon.com Review When the volcanoes rumble and the powerful storms begin brewing on Pern, it means one thing: Thread. For 257 years Pern has been free of the life-destroying Thread, but now the Red Star has reappeared in the sky and soon the deadly Threadfall will follow. In the holds and weyr...
Taking place about 80 yrs after To Ride Pegasus Rhyssa Owen, granddaughter of Daffyd op Owen, is now the Director of the Center for Parapsychic Talents on the North American East Coast. Along with many descendants of the original members, Rhyssa is under extreme pressure to provide kinetics to co...
OK, I really would like to talk more about the story, but I'm just so distracted by what McCaffrey has made Kris into, which is truly appalling. In the last book, I was incensed because Kris was, in effect, raped while drunk. Bad enough that McCaffrey trivialized the fact that that does happen to...
Anne McCaffrey's books usually get a 3 from me, meaning "Don't expect to get much of lasting value from this, but it's fun." But this one falls below that line. Its plot is not really interesting or believable... in fact I can hardly remember it though I read it just a few months ago (& have been...
This book is part of an ongoing minor project of mine to read some SF/F books by women that were written before 2000 or so. This one hails from 1982.Crystal Singer was originally four short stories, and while it comes together decently as a novel, it was easy to see the seams where the various pl...
I originally picked up Sassinak when it was first published. At the time I had no idea who Elizabeth Moon or Anne McCaffrey were, but hey there's a woman in power armour on the cover and it talks abut pirates and space ships and stuff on the back cover. What could go wrong? Nothing. I thought it...
First book of the wonderful saga of the Dragonriders of Pern, written by Anne McCaffrey this collection of 5 short novels is really a pleasure to read. Survey P.E.R.N - the really beginning of the saga - allows us to discover how Pern was discover, why she received her name and why it was a bl...
First half of book is a continuation of Dinosaur Planet, which had many unresolved story lines. In this sequel, the crew members awaken after 43 years, acclimate to their surroundings slowly over many days, encounter the giffs (later identified as pteranodons), and discover the mutineer colony. ...
I do like this one but there are bits that get boring, too much of the wrong detail that takes you away from the story - I skip these :-). I read it every now and again to remind myself how it all began. Yes, I know she wrote the landing and how the colonists got there, about the birthing of drag...
I've always been ambivalent about McCaffrey. I gave up on the Pern books fairly far into the series, because the elements of sadism and rape I'd had trouble with earlier became, in my opinion, the predominant elements. I'll probably never know if I should have given up on only that particular b...
From Publishers Weekly This space adventure further develops McCaffrey's vivid future universe of diversified cultures, technological wonders and twisted, sometimes corrupt, politics. Space Station SSS-900C, a profitable but out-of-the-way trading and mining center, is attacked by Kolnari, pira...
ix • Foreword (Alchemy and Academe) • (1970) • essay by Anne McCaffrey 1 • The Dance of the Solids • (1969) • poem by John Updike 5 • A Mess of Porridge • (1970) • shortstory by Sonya Dorman 22 • The Institute • (1970) • shortstory by Carol Emshwiller 28 • Condillac's Statue, or Wrens...
Dragon Harper Todd McCafferyStale characters running through a cardboard plot. Sadly this sums up the latest return to the Pern, the world of dragons. We have been here before but in better company. In a strange choice for this book, the thing that Pern is most known for is notably missing, dr...
Space. The feline frontier.It has been said (by Mark Twain) that "if man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." In this volume we explore the many and manifest reasons why humans should voluntarily accord first place in space to their feline brethre...
In Deluge the selkie twins, Ronan and Murel, leave Petaybee on a mission to help rescue their friend Marmie, who has been falsely arrested on the orders of a corrupt Colonel. However, the Colonel has more power in the Company than they realized and they end up being imprisoned themselves and take...
In his five Turns at the Harper Craft Hall, he had never become accustomed to that bone-throbbing noise. Perhaps, he thought, sleepily turning over, if the drums beat every dawn, or in the same sequence, he’d get accustomed enough to sleep through it. But he doubted that. He was naturally a light...
They received no replies until they entered the Solojo system, when their probe was met with a distress signal, a digitized loop rather than an actual message, live or recorded.The Condor’s scanner array, more sensitive even than the Balakiire’s, was the first to pick up the signal.“It’s coming f...
Green-garbed medical personnel hovered, checking dials and hooking up remote life-support gear. Presnol, the Guild’s senior medical officer, huddled over the record printout, tsk-tsking, occasionally swearing, and looking extremely displeased with what he saw. “Why do they leave it so late?” “Mir...
BEN ADJEI had estimated the day this year—and he hadn’t been wrong in twenty years—when the great reptiles would migrate from the salt marshes to the low-lying desert fifty kilometers inland to lay their eggs. Only offworlders bet against him, the local population shrewdly inciting them to do so....
Free the flame and sear the grasses Till the dawning Red Star passes. LESSA WOKE, COLD. Cold with more than the chill of the everlastingly clammy stone walls. Cold with the prescience of a danger stronger than the one ten full Turns ago that had then sent her, whimpering with terror, to hide ...
Khorii said aloud when she had absorbed Jaya’s impressions and feelings. “How awful for you. I wonder why this is happening.”By that time they had paged Hap and Mikaaye, and Mikaaye had arrived, saying Hap was on his way. The summons had not been an urgent one, as until Jaya explained aloud as be...
“Have you an entry in this race, too?” she asked Alessan as the runners charged away from the start. “No. I got either spindly sprinters or massive carters from my crosses. But one of my holders has a strong contestant-blue with red hatching are the colors. Not that you can distinguish them.” The...
Perhaps Lunzie had been wrong to think that, just because the heavy-worlders hadn’t taken along protein rations, they were going to . . . Well, there was no proof that their day hadn’t been spent in gratifying their sex drive, and not an atavistic pleasure in dietary habits. Kai was correct, too....
When Sassinak apologized that the lunch was made of processed foods, Kai, mindful of his praise for the previous night’s dinner, forbore to mention that he was better suited to it. But after his first mouthful of the protein, he wondered if his eating preferences had been undermined by circumstan...
As soon as the funerals on narhii-Vhiliinyar were over and the losses counted, the Ancestors retired to their accustomed hills, and began to heal the damage left behind by the Khleevi. They had only to apply their horns to the scorched and scored soil to make it flourish again, green with shoots ...
“A very good idea, oddly enough, considering the source,” one of the women in very short skirts said. “Do take us to your leader. I’d like to speak to whoever is in charge. I represent BIEX, the galaxy’s leading pharmaceutical concern, and—” “Come off it, Portia,” said one of the men in shiny pan...
The vast dome-ceilinged room accommodated the throngs of people without seeming in the least crowded, without being noisy. The constellations that shone from the darkened ceiling changed perceptibly as the planet itself turned round its primary. The mocking lights glittered on hundreds of maskers...
Pshaw-Ra came to me while I was having a nap and instructed me to go to the pyramid ship, which he said was fully fueled, and take it into space to try to find someone to help us leave the planet. I rose and found Jubal, who was fishing at the underground river. He pulled out his net full of fish...
That’s marvelous, Granddad. You don’t know how happy that’ll make everyone here. I’ve a very good idea, Laria, but doubtless you’ll fill us in. Please inform Plrgtgl immediately as a courtesy and—here’s the written notification—in Basic as well as Mrdini. Both Tower Talents heard the message tube...
Then, as she had been taught, she walked along the top on what flat space there was, kicking out her legs and shaking the thigh muscles, breathing through her mouth until she stopped panting. Taking her water bottle from her belt, she allowed herself a swig, swishing it around in her mouth to moi...
But he felt rested enough and sprang from his bed. The day was so clear that he fancied he could see the High Reaches shore across the wide bay . . . which reminded him that he hadn’t heard whether Lord Faroguy had accepted Lord Melongel’s invitation to come to his Espousal Day. Not that it was h...
The kitten trotted along beside his mother, alert, attentive, curious, and very fast. Janina realized how much Chessie’s perpetual pregnancies had slowed her down. In spite of her recent surgery, she was much quicker now that she was free of her litter. Amazing how rapidly cats recovered from eve...
“So this is where you are! Anella is looking for you.” “She’s been looking for a Lady Nalka, and there is no one by that name in the Hold.” Campen snorted with disgust. “You know perfectly well she means you.” “Then she should summon me by name. I’ll not go otherwise.” “In the meantime, she’s mak...