Welcome to Pern!

I have been a fan of the Dragonriders of Pern series most of my life, and Dragonflight is one of my favorites of the series.

What makes Anne's world of Pern so appealing is the loving attention to the many details of the planet and its society. The flora, fauna, architecture, clothing, food, traditions, legends, and history are all vividly imagined. For those not familiar with McCaffrey's world, Pern is a planet colonized sometime in the future. The settlers create an agriculture-based society, which is threatened by a space-borne menace. These "Threads" consume any organic thing- wiping out crops, herd, and even people. The colonists engineered fire-breathing dragons from the native fire-lizards to combat this threat. Society evolved to support these creatures and their riders, taking on a feudal flavor- lords and ladies, drudges, tithes to the Weyrs.

In Dragonflight, the story behind the legend of Lessa unfolds. It is a troubling period in the history of Pern: 400 years of Thread-free skies and concern over the tyrant Fax have caused the one remaining Weyr of dragons to fall into disfavor. F'lar and his loyal wing of dragonriders Search for a strong woman to Impress the not-yet-hatched queen dragon. He finds Lessa, the only survivor of Fax's fury from her family. She becomes Weyrwoman to the dragon queen, and joins with F'lar in the fight to ready Pern against the return of Thread. Lessa's accidental discovery of the dragon's ability to travel between times becomes the solution to Pern's shortage of fighting dragons.

Most aspects of this feudal society make for great story-telling. The relationship between Lessa and F'lar, however, is sometimes puzzling to the point of annoyance. She has been focused and strong as steel for all those years, only to act like a little girl with F'lar? Lessa perhaps struggles to balance her immense inner strength with her desire to be cared for and loved. F'lar may be the father figure she needs since her family was slaughtered when she was a child. Anyway, F'lar sometimes shakes her, disciplines her, and displays a proprietary attitude towards her.

The characters are too "black or white" to be of much interest on their own. Lessa, F'lar, F'nor- good: Fax, R'gul- bad. This works well in this story, I think, because it is the stuff of legend. The story is larger than life, so having the characters squarely for or against the good fight makes sense.

I read Dragonflight as a young girl of about 13, and very impressionable, so to speak. My friends and I talked about McCaffrey's world like other girls our age talked about soap operas- Pern was our escape from reality when we needed it. Looking back now, especially that I have daughters of my own, I wouldn't recommend this novel for young readers because of the sexuality involved in Lessa and F'lar's relationship. As dragons mate, so do the riders. The people succomb to the lust of the dragons, and will have sex with the rider of the dragon's partner. This is true for the green and blue dragon riders, who at this point in Pern's history are strictly male. References to green/blue relationships are minimal in this book, but are more prominent in McCaffrey's later works. There is no religion on Pern, being abandoned by the colonists as a dangerous, superstitious tradition. As a parent, these are aspects of a book I would like to know before handing it over to my child.

Regardless, the planet Pern and its dragons will always have a place in my heart- somewhere I can "get away from it all" no matter where I am.