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 to be minor characters, and I'm not sure we even get inside their heads. My guess is that McCaffrey realized she bit off more than she could chew and some of the characters had to be pushed more into the background in order to keep the story from being completely unwieldy. It's still unwieldly even so. McCaffrey does have a gift for creating characters whose stories I want to know. Where she struggles is her 'bad guys'. The closest thing to a 'big bad' in the book has to basically be written off as a narcissistic psychopath, as there is no nuance to what drives the character, whose motives shift from semi-respectable, to thieving because it can be done, to flat out crazy pants revenging. My other big complaint is the major skim overs of story. I realize with Jaxom it is because there's a book of his whole story. I'm guessing there must be a story of Gage and Ara's travels. Because if there isn't, I can't figure out why there's such a huge, important gap in their story. There also seemed to be smaller odd gaps in the story, which I'm guessing are due from this being transferred from cassette to digital and portions near the ends of the tapes may have been cut off in places, but it is just my theory. Finally, the other piece that made me nutty was how one is nearly 2/3rds of the way through the story and suddenly it's all about the obsession they all have with archeological digs of the original people of Pern. And the ending is so weirdly anti-climactic whilst trying to be cliff hanger in nature. Oi
The Renegades of Pern is a disjointed entry in the Pern series. The time in this book covers the time in Dragonflight, Dragonquest, The White Dragon, the novella The Girl Who Heard Dragons, and the Harper Hall trilogy.Renegades reads liked a deleted scene reel. It gives some backstory, but putting it all together for its own side story doesn't work well. Because this book parallels the time in the others, it's forced to skip forward to whatever parallel plot plot is happening. Renegades focuses on Thella, the antagonist from The Girl Who Heard Dragons, and her two targets, Jayge and Aramina. Piemur is at the Southern Hold and gives some perspective of the Oldtimers and the development of the new hold. At the very end, the major characters all come together, and there is some discovery of items left in Landing by the first settlers on Pern.I was never really interested in Jayge. Thella is interesting, but very one-dimensional. Aramina seemed to have less page time than the novella she was in, which I found strange. Now thinking back, it's hard for me to remember which character had the most focus, and that's probably because there isn't a solid plotline.I liked that Jaxom and Ruth appear for a brief time in the end. Overall, very little about the dragons and their riders, and no real focus on the people living in holds either. It's essentially everyone on the fringe.
What do You think about The Renegades Of Pern (1997)?
The Renegades of Pern has two plotlines. The first is a young woman, Thella, who gathers holdless people to her and raids to prowide for them. And the other is discovering ruins in the south.These two plots never really intertwine and as a result I never really cared about either of them. There were too many long periods with nothing happening and when something did happen it was often without enough build-up and over oo quickly, which again meant I really didn't care.I didn't feel like I really got to know any of the characters, they never seemed to be more than onedimentional.In short I was quite disappointed with this book. I had expected a celebrated author like Anne McCaffrey who has writen so many books in this series to have more to offer, and also because I really liked the first book in the series. I wouldn't recomend this book to anyone unless you must read i to complete the series.
—Iben
3.5 starsAs a child I never liked this book, and read it only to fill in some gaps, mainly with Toric's Southern Hold; seeing Pern with flaws was too much. I didn't want to know about the holdless, thieves and murderers, and - unlike all the other books - it covers a broad time span of many years rather than centering on one event or person.As an adult I appreciate it more, reading it to link events in all the other books, including those which spin off from the main plots. It gives me the distance to watch changes and see connections for myself.
—Hilary
Dude, even McCaffrey got bored with her own new (deeply boring) characters halfway through the book, chucked the whole Holdless plotlines for huge swathes, and went back to focusing on Piemur and Toric and the politics of the Southern continent. It irks my sense of order that huge chunks of the through-narrative from the original (in my mind) six books/two trilogies has to be continued here before being picked up as the A story once again in All the Weyrs of Pern again. It seems a poorly put-together book, but I nevertheless relished the bits about Piemur growing up and continuing his story from Dragondrums. I also like the gaps filled in a bit in and around The White Dragon. Those two reasons are worth it to me to slog around the Jayge-Aramina-Thella bits to fill in details for the overarching storyline. Oh, also? The cover shown here does not match my book, even though I selected via ISBN number. ::grumps::
—notyourmonkey
