Read Moreta: Dragonlady Of Pern (1997)

What do You think about Moreta: Dragonlady Of Pern (1997)?

This is an amazing book about the Planet Pern's history. In the Harper hall trilogy, and the Dragonridesd of Pern books, they mention Moreta, and the balad about her heroic journey. This book is her story. As an avid Pern fan I love learning about it's "past". Though it is a great book, there are times when it can get a tad bit slow but overall it is exciting. Anne McCaffrey is a very discriptive writter, which is great for me because I love to envision the scene as it plays out. Even with all the detail, however it can still move at a good clip. This is a good type of book for faster readers, I think, because it is so deatailed and it is easier to get the excitement from fast parts if you can read it a bit faster to get through the details. There are a few inconsistencies from the stories to the actual book, for example, Moreta came from Keroon in the book but in the stories she is of Ruathan blood. Another point is that in the book Moreta could not talk to all dragons, just a few of the queens, which could be a side affect from riding Holth when Orlith could not leave the hatching ground. Even with all of it's faults I absolutly love this book and would recomend it to most people who have already started reading Anne McCaffrey books.
—Annie

#7 overall publication order of the "Pern" fantasy series, this seems to be a stand-alone story of the weyr-woman Moreta, whose dragon Orlith is the queen of Fort Weyr. The events in this book happen about 900 years before the earlier books in the series, and take place when they are just discovering that dragons cannot only go "between" and thus traverse hundreds of miles in the blink of an eye, but that they can also go other places in TIME. A plague is upon the land, started by a strange cat-like creature and spread to horses and other four-legged beasts. Many all across Pern have died, but some have recovered, and the principle of vaccination is put to good use to keep many people (and animals!) alive. Moreta works together with Alessan, new leader of Ruatha Hold--they meet at a Gather there, and shortly after when the sickness starts, they work together to secure ingredients needed to treat the illness by using dragon riders to travel other places and times. A romance develops between them, but the story has a rather sad and bittersweet ending, but this is something you sort of knew was coming if you're familiar with the series, as there is a ballad in some of the other earlier books (that Menolly sings if I remember right) about Moreta's Ride--and now it all makes sense. Very well done, enjoyable to listen to--another different reader than previous books, but very well-suited to the prose and the tone of the book.
—Spuddie

When I was a kid, I remember learning in English class about the parts of a narrative: Rising Action, Climax, and Denouement. The teacher illustrated this by drawing an equilateral triangle on the board, with the rising action on the left side and the falling action on the right, and the climax as the peak of the triangle. Did we all get taught this concept the same way?It didn't take me long to learn that this was absurdly wrong. The climax occurs very close to the end of the narrative, not in the middle. Well, apparently McCaffrey was taught the same way as I was, and apparently she took it to heart when it came to Moreta. The climax--such as it is--occurs midway through the book. The entire second half is a mopping up action, with little bogus crises thrown in to keep the plot lurching along. Once the plague is pretty much under control, the story is over, and the rest is just so much anticlimax. (And I'm sorry, but a novel centered around a disease, where the climactic moment is someone finding a cure in a book, is not much of a story under the best of circumstances.)(The following paragraph contains tiny, deliberately obscure spoilers, and details that will seem nonsensical if you haven't read the book.) While the Aftermath is powerfully written, the Great Ride alluded to in other Pern novels hardly seems necessary--if they can Time things, why not wait until tomorrow or the day after to do things? Why not take her time? [*rimshot*] And, for that matter, why keep the plan secret from the Weyrleaders? Well, because it necessitates Heroic Action on the part of the Dragonladies, of course, but it doesn't really make sense within the framework of Pern. If this is what the Masterhealer demands, then this is simply what must be done. Secrecy and going around behind the backs of the Weyrleaders seems unnecessary and contrived.Another aspect of MacCaffrey's writing that took me out of the plot was the incessant name-dropping in the first and final chapters. The first chapter names twenty-one different characters--oh yeah, I counted. In addition, eleven localities are mentioned by name, and four dragons. But this is nothing compared to the final chapter, in which SIXTY-TWO different characters are named, along with ten locales and TWENTY-FIVE different dragons. Most of these names, by the way, do not appear anywhere in the novel besides these two chapters.Here is an example from the last chapter, from page 302 of my edition:"'It's not something anyone admits to but T'grel must have to use it to cope with M'tani. Don't bother with L'bol at Igen. He's useless. Go directly to Dalova, Allaneth's rider. She lost a lot of bloodkin at Igen Sea Hold. She'd know who among her riders time it. And Igen has all those little cotholds stashed in the desert and on the riverbanks. Surely you've got a few good friends left at Ista. You were there ten Turns. Have you heard that F'gal's bad with kidney chill?'" Now it could be argued that the point here is to emphasize the scope--all the different people that Moreta must work with, and so forth. But this comes back to another bit of bad teaching. Every beginning writer has heard "Show, don't tell." Well this is not always true. When showing involved levels of detail that will break the narrative for the reader, good authors simply summarize the action. They tell us what happened instead of showing it to us. Readers fill in the gaps of time, and assume that the details we are not given are all in their proper place. Don't believe me? When was the last time you read about a character using the toilet? Do no characters use the toilet because all literary characters are constipated and dehydrated? Or do we merely assume that goes on without needing to be shown all the gory details?I'm sorry, but this is not merely bad writing, it's laughably bad writing.
—Icarus