I actually did a review for the Todd-only Pern novel a while back (Dragon’s Blood). I can’t figure out whether this one is before or after – I think before, as in this one they haven’t started their exploration of the Southern Continent.
Anyway, the brilliant thing about the Dragons of Pern series is that you can pick up any one of the books and pretty much throw yourself straight into the story. I mean there’s not much to remember for the books’ premise: Sci-fi/ Fantasy world with dragons that was colonised by our descendants escaping Earth. Sister planet orbits too close every once in a while and drops the evil life-form called thread. Dragons burn thread, everybody happy…
Dragon’s Fire involves the search for firestone – the fuel dragons need to create flames with is running out and with the next pass about 30 years away something needs to be done. Thus some heroes are discovered and the disaster accordingly dealt with in a way that keeps the reader involved, interested, and excited right to the last page. In fact the stories stay so fresh up to the end that you almost don’t see it coming, and in some ways feel a bit short-changed in not having the usual wind down.
It’s nothing special when compared to other Pern novels, but in the greater scheme of things the McCaffrey’s write brilliant fiction: The scenery is always colourful, and the culture continues around and through the plot. The characters are crafted very deftly in such a way that their character is quickly identifiable and memorable yet they still appear to have depth – it’s just that we don’t really see it (or need to).
I enjoyed it; however, there were a few things that irked me somewhat. The main characters seem a bit dumb when it comes to communication (horrid pun given that one of the guys is a mute…). There were a number of points when I was left thinking “but but why didn’t you say something??” or “how can anyone be that stupid?!” etc. Some of these reasons I may have just missed, and a few are explained later, but it seemed to me the main characters were behaving a bit too irrationally to achieve verisimilitude. This might have been at least partially due to having two writers involved and while they know intimately the world that has been created, they do have slightly different writing styles and merging each of their own bits with the other didn’t quite mesh nicely in places.
All in all it’s a good book with good twists and changes in plot, but just a tad frustrating. Read it if you like Pern and the McCaffrey’s, don’t if you don’t :P
2 comments:
Imagine my absolute delight on seeing five quality reviews where I hadn't expected to see any :D Thanks so much! We are starting to build up our reference library...some of these ought to go on my reading list. The Tom Holt one, in particular, sounds interesting.
I've added tags to your reviews, would be great if everyone put some in their own, as I'm not sure they're the most appropriate ones, but hopefully haven't got anything wrong. Now we just need to get a review from Matthew (and get Rory to accept his invite! I'll send another one and see what happens, or spam him with them...)
Finally read this book - did you notice the strange repeating passage? It was the description of the Gather, pretty much copied and pasted from part one into part two...anyway, I wasn't impressed. And I have to agree about the lack of communication between characters, though my impression was that this is typical of the series.
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