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, dragons, the telepathic and empathic companions of this forgotten colony of humans deposited on Pern. The dragons and their lesser cousins, watch-weyrs and firelizards were genetically engineered so long ago that for most of Pern's history, their origins were lost. Here they make only rare appearances and we are not bonded with them nor do we hear dragon voices.Dragon Harper is the story of Kindan, a boy from a mining community who, in a previous book has become admitted to Harper Hall. Here at “Harper High” Kindan the young apprentice gets into dispute with school bully (Pern seems overrun with these) Vaxoram over a girl. Clueless masters seem to run the place and permit the two to fight an actual duel. Once again the stew of clichés is used to move around characters who seem to have no organic motivation.The duel itself is improbable, with Kindan overcoming a larger, more powerful and better-trained swordsman after a week’s training. As a black belt and former fencer I can assure you that it isn’t persuasive, people don’t learn this stuff this fast. Equally improbable, the bully goes on to become a devoted friend. Also something I haven’t seen in real life. I fought a bully once and got respect, but friendship from such a person was neither wanted nor forthcoming. Kindan is prospering at Harper Hall when once again a plague devastates Pern. One wonders why there are such plagues on Pern. The colonists who were originally sent out would have been healthy and not brought such organisms with them in their bodies or their animals. It’s unlikely that an alien organism would infect creatures from another world. I’m closer to a pine tree than I‘d be to any creature that was native Pernese life. If something did jump from alien life to Terran life it would probably be 100% fatal as there would be no resistance to it at all. Well perhaps something fell somewhere as Woody Allen liked to say.Improbabilities pile up in this book. In the province of Fort Hold, with a population of around 10,000, the sole healer dies of plague. It falls to Kindan to replace him, apparently there are no other medical personnel. This is repeated as Kindan’s friends step into positions of authority as other Masters die. We don’t know why the Master Harper favors Kindan, nor why it falls to three youngsters to search records for the answers to Pern’s survival. You would think that this would have been handled at higher level with greater assets. Apparently Kindan’s friends are the best and the brightest, quite a posse. It strains credulity that this early teen would be the only qualified person or that the adults would defer to him and his friends in battling a plague. This is the stuff of Saturday morning cartoons. Voice is an issue in this book. While the character is a teen (if his age is ever specified I missed it) his voice is that of a much older person and as a result I never bought this character. He even seems nebulous physically, there’s little description of him and I never had a visual picture to follow. Beyond modest talents as a harper there seems little to recommend Kindan as a protagonist. Unlike Jaxom, an earlier hero from “White Dragon” who is clearly a young man of promise, Kindan doesn’t impress with wit or intellect. So why is this our protagonist? Why is he gifted with the high honor of a fire-lizard when others more deserving and of higher rank are not? Why does he rise so far so fast?Kindan’s relatively minor contributions to weathering the disease (thermometer paste and face masks) don’t really influence the course of the epidemic. He doesn’t really alter the course of anything in this book. He simply observes and weathers it. Perhaps realistic but hardly inspiring. So this is neither a coming of age book, nor a heroic adventure nor one of those books where a small struggle becomes symbolic of a larger battle or issue. It’s just sort of there. Torches are not easily passed (as we can see from the Olympics this year) and unfortunately it seems that this fails more often then it succeeds. We can also see this in the pastiches written by writers teamed with the great Andre Norton. The add-ons authors may be good individually (or not) they may love Norton but they are not Norton and the resulting product is the worst sort of compromise in nobody’s voice. The bonds of family are not enough to make up for the fact that Todd is not the writer that his mother is. Putting the name McCaffery on this book doesn’t make this good. One really feels that the franchise is being milked like Stars Wars or Forgotten Realms or some other “product” that is just filling shelves with inked wood pulp as opposed to real books.One of the more difficult things to do in a long run series is to make each book fresh and yet to provide enough of the back story that a new reader is not lost. Dragon Harper does not succeed in this. You’ll have difficulty figuring out Pern and how and why it works. Nor will you find it persuasive. It’s as if the author didn’t feel he had to come up with a viable functioning society. The Pros: This is an amiable little tale, which if you had not read the vastly better and more original stories might serve to whet a taste for Pern. But why would you enter Pern here rather than through the best-selling “White Dragon?” Why soldier with Kindan when you could ride with Moreta and scream involuntarily NO! at her fate. When your fists could clench and your eyes narrow as Lessa confronts her enemies. Or when your heart could be in your throat as you watch every dragon on Pern roar into the air, to literally form a living ramp with their bodies, saving F’nor and his dragon Canth from plunging to the ground after their assault on the Red Star…well may be there weren’t really any pros for this book after all.The Cons: Weak characters who are either clichés, pale copies of earlier characters from the series, or mere devices to move the recycled plot along. Improbable action scenes and too little time spent on what makes Pern special, dragons. Rating 4 stars out of 10By Edward McKeown with the assistance of noted dragon-rider Schelly Keefer.
Product Description Kindan is an apprentice harper at the Harper Hall but he is finding the lessons very difficult and although he has his friends, Nonala, Kelsa and Verilan, he also has enemies, such as the bully Vaxoram. Things begin to improve for Kindan when he beats Vaxoram in a duel and Vaxoram becomes first his servant and then gradually his trusted friend. Then Kindan impresses a fire-lizard and becomes the proud owner of the magnicent Valla. At the hatching, he meets Koriana, daughter of Lord Holder Bemin of Fort Hold. She also impresses and she and Kindan fall in love, but her parents disapprove and she has to return to Fort Hold. Then a plague begins to spread across Pern, killing nearly everyone infected. Kindan and his friends search the harper records to see if they can find a cure, but all they can find is mention of a similar plague over a hundred Turns past. As the plague gets worse Kindan and Vaxoram are sent to Fort Hold to help tend the sick. Kindan will be reunited with Koriana, but will she be free of the plague, and will he be able to find a cure before more people die? About the Author Anne McCaffrey is a prolific bestselling author, best known for the novels about the Dragonriders of Pern. Anne McCaffrey lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in County Wicklow, Ireland. Visit the author's website at www.annemccaffrey.net Todd McCaffrey, Anne's son, is a computer engineer living in Los Angeles. Visit his website on www.toddmccaffrey.org
What do You think about Dragon Harper (2007)?
I have enjoyed the Dragons of Pern series since I first read Dragonflight way back when. I lost track of it after 1998's Masterharper of Pern and somehow missed the new books written with Todd McCaffrey. (On the plus side, I now have a new stack of books to look for and read.)Since I have obviously missed a few titles, I had some trouble placing this book within the chronology of Pern. Obviously it takes place before the original stories but is it before or after Moreta's Ride and Nerilka's Story? Like those two books, this one deals with a flu-like pandemic which decimates the population.One of the things that makes this series so enjoyable is how it has created this world that has a vast population and multiple locations as well as a rich history. Pivotal events are seen from many different points of view, and sometimes we get to go back into the past to see the real events behind a future legend or enigmatic song.
—Smaileh
It had been a while since I read a novel of Pern so I gave this a go. It is very much as I remember the series being, there are dragon riders, holds, a bit of angst, a little adversity, a terrible plague all mixed together to produce a enjoyable fantasy reading experience. No surprises, even after all these years of not reading anything from Pern, but no real let downs either. This is the first Pern book I have read where the original author, Anne, collaborates with her son and while it did not fire me up the way the original Anne McCaffrey books did when I discovered them way back, I did not object to it either.Having read a fair bit of popular fiction recently I was struck by the high quality of authorship (is that a word?) and editing in this book. It is nice to find an author who does not appear to have compromised her writing skills or creative process in order to produce bulk material.
—Deborah Ideiosepius
What I learned (yet again) from this book: Anne McCaffrey should never have let her son get involved in the Pern books. Not that she's a top-quality writer herself, but she does know how to create a world that is interesting enough you want to keep coming back to it despite the flaws in her prose. Her son clearly doesn't live in that world the same way she does. This book is completely shallow, the characters are one-dimensional (the one attempt at an evolution of personality happens in an implausible blink of an eye) and you really don't care all that much when they get killed off. Sloppy, sloppy work. Hand the keyboard back to your mother.
—Hallie
