Customer Reviews

Dragonsblood (Pern)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

My theory on lengthy series is they tend to be divided into several tiers of quality: great ones (usually early on), good ones that don't match the passion or excitement of the top ones, adequate ones that serviceably move the grand story along but aren't particularly original or well-written, and the bad ones that were just spit out because series fans would by them. Dragonsblood for the most part falls into the second category, with a few flaws that move it down a bit within that tier.
It isn't such harsh praise to say the book doesn't match the first two series (dragonflight/quest/singer/song/drums, White Dragon) since they were so good, but one does miss the deep characterization, the passion, the originality of those earlier works. It's also not on par with some of the later "good-but-not-great" ones, such as All the Weyrs, but it does a decent job of storytelling within a familiar world.
Unfortunately, one of the flaws is that it's a bit too familiar plot-wise. We've seen much of Dragonsblood's story before: the plague, the race against time for a cure, the use of timing it to heal wounded dragonriders, the girl who can hear all dragons, the intemperate and/or incompetent weyrleader/weyrwoman who threatens the weyr's survival, found technology from the past helping out in the present, and perhaps most egregious, the use of a song from the past to inform the future of what they should be doing. It would have been nice to have been given a more original storyline.
Dragonsblood tracks two time periods, the second generation after original colonization, focusing mostly on Wind Blossom, and 500 turns later, focusing on Lorana. During threadfall, a plague strikes first dragonlizards and then dragons themselves, calling into the question the very survival of the humans on Pern. Without going into how, both time periods race to find a cure. Wind Blossom and others must also figure out a way to get that cure to the future. It's a more compelling and fast-paced plot than most of the later Pern books, and the time switches are handled well for the most part, with little confusion. Some confusion does arise, however, from the sheer number of characters, many of whom seem a bit superfluous. Some judicious editing would have helped here.
The characters range from fully fleshed out ones such as Lorana and Wind Blossom to several who are more shallowly presented and a few who simply appear and disappear both in the text and in memory.
There are a few clumsy attempts to "explain" why things happen as they do in the future, those awkward "so that's why people call them that" moments that often occur in prequel books. Even worse, there are a few times where things seem to contradict earlier, accepted Pern history. The suspension of disbelief at those moments is pretty hard.
The ending has a bit of a deus ex machina feel to it and is greatly burdened by the sudden influx of techno-speak. Here again, it's hard to believe what is happening, as characters in a barely-technological society are suddenly spouting gene theory and actually performing experiments, and doing it all quickly and smoothly. The ending, therefore, pulls the book down a bit in its rating.
In the end, while it has its many problems, Dragonsblood isn't a bad addition to the Pern canon, though it doesn't add much. Since it's better than Dragon's Kin, the previous book and one which McCaffery worked on as well, the trend is towards improvement, which bodes well. I'm not sure there are a lot of Pern stories left to tell (the overly familiar plot in this one gives pause), but with Dragonsblood's improvement over Dragon's Kin, McCaffery junior shows he might be able to handle what ones are left. Recommended for fans of the series, who won't be as disappointed as they've been with others. But for newbies, go back and start with Dragonflight and read in publication order. Then you'll understand why so many people flock to buy even the weaker ones.

Please ignore all but the first review of this particular book. Honestly, this was *not* good work, in a few ways, it was superior to Dragon's Kin, but not by very much. And it spoils more than it helps continuing the story of Pern.

~*Mild Spoiler alert.*~

Anne has made a reputation for not allowing fanfiction to be written (up until very recently) about her world, Pern. Her fear was that people would warp her world in ways she did not want. However, she seems to have allowed Todd to do plenty of warping on his own. And to be honest, I have seen better fanfiction than this book! (Track down Dragonschoice, if you don't belive me.) Where this book mostly fails is in it's treatment of previous canon, storyline and characterization.

Dragonsblood does not follow earlier story canon [Whers *were* an error, *not* a secret back-up plan, meant to look like a mistake]. Years of Anne telling us it was supposed to be a mistake, cannot suddenly be undone by deciding that "No! They weren't a mistake! They're supposed to eat Thread at night! Yeah! Because the air's all thick and stuff, and they fly in teams just like dragons!" Let's forget completely for a moment that: 1. Whers aren't that social (Dragonflight), and have lousy telepathy, so they couldn't really organize themselves anyway. 2. They have stubby, nothing wings that are clipped on top of it (Dragonflight). 3. How does the air get "thick" at night? 4. Anne's said in more than one place that Thread does not fall at night (http(colon)//www(dot)ids(dot)org(dot)au/~annac/dr/drmain/ammsg(dot)html, and Skies of Pern, and if it does, that's what the grubs are for. Not whers that have suddenly developed the ability to fly, and somehow eat Thread without it eating them from the inside out before it dies.

Todd also unfortunately forgets basic details about the very creatures he's writting about: whers have only 2 toes on each foot, not 3, *cannot* fly, and cannot hang about during the day. Experienced Weyrfolk do not suddenly forget that gold dragon eggs are 30% larger than regular eggs, and golden-tinged, so cannot "regular" eggs cannot be confused for gold ones.

And also about the world itself, Tea plants simply didn't take to Pernese soil, they were not lost because of the Crossing (Dragonsdawn), Pern does not have honey, because bees didn't survive the trip (The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern). Forgetting one or two of these things isn't so bad, its the fact that so many of these little facts are wrong and the incorrect statements repeated so much that rankles the mind of anyone who loves the original Anne books.

The storylines are a tangled mess, the jumping back and forth between the first and third Passes makes following the story difficult. Between having a new character being added every few pages and sumarilly forgeting they exist or killing them, leaves little opportunity to empathize with many of the characters or even care much when they do die or dissapear. Many plotlines were started, and nothing was made of them, Todd's editor should've snapped those out when she saw them. It probably would've helped kept the book from being a 400+ page monster if she had. That's disgraceful really, just because the McCaffrey's write-something, doesn't mean it has to go into print. There is such a thing as viciously and heartlessly murdering your darlings in the editing and polishing phases of writting.

Characterization was poor, lacking both in nearly any empathizing qualities or even likability. Wind Blossom was nicely portrayed as a somewhat bitter woman, forever living with the memory of her mother's standards, this created a good area of sympathizing with her, but she has no real redemming qualities to either make her even somewhat likable or able to be seen as anything but a plot device.

Lorana is a Mary Sue character if there ever was one, entirely too sweet and naive for anyone's tolerance, all she wants is to do good for the world, sketching pictues (I take the time now to remind you that at the 3rd Pass, paper was replaced with hides for record keeping, only paid Artists got canvas to paint or draw on), but all those icky-bad people and that yucky-yuck disease just make things so hard for her to do all those lovely sketches that people find so enchanting. Because she's had such a hard life after that plague; "Wait, wasn't there The Big Plague in Moreta? Yeah, but this is another plague. They happen a whole lot, just no one talks about them, for some reason I don't really explain all that well." Like they've never seen a portrait made before Lorana showed up.... She's too damn wishy-washy. And let's not start on the Talent universe infringements: her carisaks (you just couldn't say shoulder bag, could you Todd?), her Damia-style God-like telepathic powers. "She's so strong not only can she talk to other dragons, all of them talking all of the time doesn't seem to drive her out of her mind, and she can toss dragons /between/ to the colony days, and they aren't even hers!" It's nauseating, for once can we have a sona solve problems with a bit of ingenuity? Not all that tossing about of super-powers like they've been doing since Skies of Pern.

Aside from those two, every other character tends to slip through the cracks of one's mind, there's nothing in particular to keep them stuck in your memory. They basically did nothing but be plot fodder, and not even good fodder at that, choking their way down the throat of the reader as they struggled to find the signifigance of naming every single person in the Lower Caverns, and medical tents, even as some of them did only minor things like bringing food in for the main characters to eat, or offering Wind Blossom a cup of klah. Is it really necessary to mention all of those people? When they have absolutely no influence over the storyline or even in the actions of the main chracters?

Dragonsblood is unpolished, sorely needed to be cut by 50 pages, the hanging plots needed to be tied up, and for Faranth's sake Todd, Read ALL of your mother's books first! Get your facts straight, and make post-it notes of them somewhere where you can see them to remember that whers have two toes, that Pern doesn't have honey, that whers were an error and no amount of covering your ears and saying "nah-nah" won't unmake that statement, and for all of those little things that ruin the atmosphere of the world we've all come to know and love.

This book is nice enough on its own, but only if you disregard everything Pernese from Dragonsflight onward. While reading this book, the phrase that most popped into my mind was "Did Todd even READ his mother's books?" He basically takes Pern canon and throws it out the window, unceremoniously and unapologetically. The only way I allowed myself to enjoy this book at all was to consider it part of a parallel universe, certainly not the Pern I've been devoted fan of for the past 23 years. Canon, Todd, canon! I'm not sure which of the many, many deviations from canon I was most horrified over, but I think one of them was Todd's addition of steps (steps!!!!!!) from every single weyr within a Weyr. No! Only the queens weyrs have steps. If all the weyrs had steps to them (and can you imagine how this would be accomplished as far above the ground as some weyrs are?), I think this would have been mentioned previously. What HAS been mentioned previously is snippets that prove there are no steps; for instance, Menolly requires a ride from Mirrim and Path to reach Jaxom while he's sleeping in one of the weyrs. Moreta requires a lift from Malth to reach Berchar in S'gor's weyr. I won't even comment on the watch-whers, since others have here. I really have no problem with different writers in a series adding new content and material, but...don't make major changes to canon! There's plenty that could be added to Pern without blatantly refuting all that's been suggested throughout the series!

I sit here wondering exactly how to describe this trainwreck and I'm totally at a loss. I have been a fan of McCaffrey's work (well, Mom's) since the mid 70s and this... its like finding out the Mona Lisa really is a man and the full version of the painting has him wearing pantaloons. I am not done with this book yet because I just...can't... force myself.

I don't understand why so many female main characters in these books can speak to every dragon (Moreta couldn't, she could only speak to Orlith and Hoth) and yet each time its discovered all the secondary characters act like its so amazingly uncommon.

We have a female character who - through a jumble of unrelated and to some extent unfinished incidents - makes her way to become Impressed by a queen dragon. All this takes place a few weeks prior to Threadfalling. Our heroine starts by being an artist, turns into a beast healer (vet?) and then Weyrwoman all in the first half of the book with the help of characters who vanish and never return to the story line.

The "first fall" story has been done several times, but never so abysmally as here. Apparently decades of training means nothing - with each Threadfall there are dozens of dragon deaths as a planet full of inept dragonriders tries to do what in every other book they were born to do: fight thread. And the weyrfolk reaction? I've seen more enthusiasm from Oakland when the Raiders lose than Benden Weyr showed when half their dragons died.

Basically, the characters are shallow. The writing & editing are poor (he makes up his own words). Instead of coming up with any plausible explanation for the things Wind Blossom hints at, he makes them all "secrets" that she is forbidden to reveal - even the fact that she had dophin assistance in retrieving objects lost in the ocean is something she had to keep secret. So many of the characters have such similar names I almost had to keep notes.

Todd is nothing more than a small child dressing up in his parent's uniform pretending to be a policeman. Please, if you're a fan of Anne's, read her writing. Stay away from his.

This is another book in the long-running Dragonriders of Pern series, first started by Anne McCaffrey. Todd McCaffrey (author's son) has co-written one book with her before, but this is his first solo effort. In a nutshell, it is very bad.

The problems with this book are numerous, and have all been well documented in the previous (bad) reviews. I will therefore make this brief.

To begin with, the plot is incredibly complex and switches back and forth between two timeperiods 500 years apart. It was very difficult to keep the characters and events straight between the two. Also, there are way too many secondary characters that serve no real purpose. Perhaps the most annoying thing though, was that there are many characters that all have very similar names. Do we really need a D'gin, D'gan, and D'vin? It's ok to use more than 4 letters to make a name.

The plot itself was pretty dry and uninteresting. The planetary plague plotline has been done and better than this. I understand that in such a long series you are going to have repeats and recycled ideas, but it needs to be done better.

The thing that bothered me most was the writing itself. The prose is clumsy and I had a lot of trouble following the ideas the characters were trying to get across. The author seems to be fond of having the characters realize something without feeling to need to tell the reader what it is exactly. I spent a large part of my time wondering what the heck Wind Blossom was talking about.

All in all, the diehard fans of the series will read it no matter what. If you can avoid this one do so. It does not improve the series and really adds nothing to it at all.

As a former Publisher's Weekly reviewer, I have no idea how this clunker got a starred review. Its greatest virtue is that it makes Eragon look like Pulizer material. The writing can only be described as terrible. I've taught high school fiction writing and frankly, my students' products were less clunky, repetitive and difficult to track than this. The quality is so poor that it repeatedly intrudes, making it difficult to engage with the plot. I have a high tolerance for unevenness in this series, but I may not be able to finish this one.

Overall, I enjoyed Dragonsblood by Todd McCaffrey. However, after years of reading the wonderful stories by his mother Anne McCaffrey, I have to say it definently falls short of any expectations I might have had. It was not nearly as disappointing as Dragon's Kin, but I found myself extremely frustrated by some aspects of the book. Yet, I am glad I read the book, as I did enjoy it once I was able to force myself past some of its problems.

I think the major failure in the book was the emotional disconnect. One of Anne's strengths has always been drawing you into the story and into the characters. Although Todd was able to give an exellent description of the characters involved (as many as there were), for some reason I never felt connected to any character, even Lorana.

I also had major frustrations with the discrepancies between Dragonsblood and the rest of the Pern series. Although there have been some explanations as to why this novel refers to Windblossom as Kitti Ping's daughter rather than granddaughter (as Anne's previous works did), I found it incredibly distracting from the story. Todd redundantly harps on the mother-daughter relationship between Kitti and Windblossom, and it seems completely out of context to the story, not to mention out of context with the rest of the Pern series.

I was also bothered by Dragonsblood's claims about watch whers, starting with the one that watch whers were not accidents, and that they flew and ate Thread at night. Well, to start with, watch whers were an accident NOT an intentional design by Windblossom. Windblossom tried to make a second batch of dragons after Kitti Ping died just after finishing the genetic alterations necessary for the first ones, and she was a failure and created watch whers. Secondly, how could they EAT Thread? Thread eats all carbon-based life (including dragons, fire lizzards, and anything else in its path), so it would also eat watch whers. Finally, in all of Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, watch whers are described as guarding the holds being CHAINED in watch wher caves. How could hords of watch whers fly thread at night and eat it if they are chained in caves? Besides, IF Thread falls at night (which I believe it was discussed that Anne previously state that this did not happen), why don't the dragons just fight Thread at night?

Even beyond all the discrepancies, I had one major problem with Dragonsblood. *WARNING -- spoiling ahead!* Throughout all of the Pern series, Anne McCaffrey has made it very clear that there is an extraordinary bond between dragon and rider (example: L'tol later Lytol). In those cases, when a dragon or dragon and rider died, the entire planet of dragonriders were devestated. And the rider of the dragon who became a dragonless man or woman was completely destroyed. In most cases, they would commit suicide rather than bear their life alone as a "shadow of a man". In Dragonsblood, Todd seems to kill off dragons left and right, and although everyone is sad, the riders aren't "shadows" of themselves. In fact, when Lorana's dragon dies, she is commatose for a little while, but then she just shakes it off and goes back to saving the world. *spoiling over*

All in all, I think this book could have used a MUCH better editor who actually knows the Pern books, and perhaps a little something about characterization. I did enjoy reading this book, but probably only because I enjoy reading anything about Pern. I found this book forgettable and for the first time in a Pern series book (well, beside Dragon's Kin), I had NO problem putting the book down. And I did. A lot. I recommend reading this only because I always enjoy reading more about the Pern story, but keep your expectations low and just try to ignore the discrepencies.

I am severely displeased with Todd McCaffrey's writing. It's sappy, sugarcoated, and the stuff of Disney princess movies. The corny ending made me gag and I cannot believe Anne McCaffrey chose this moron as her prodigy for Pern. Surely there are better writers out there who can continue the legacy of Pern...anyone!? I am saddened to see how Todd McCaffrey is desecrating the world of Pern one book at a time. If there were a lower rating than one star, I would give this vile waste of paper.

I will never again buy another book with Todd McCaffrey's name on it!!!!!!!

While I won't come right out and say that I disliked this book, I will say that it's definitely not one of my favorites in the Pern series. It may just be that Todd McCaffrey is still coming into his own and finding his voice as a writer, but I think poor editing also played a part.

I find it very hard to believe that any decent editor wouldn't have immediately chopped at least half of the characters in the book. So many people, pets, and other random names walk in and out of scenes that I found myself dizzy after only a few chapters. Also, there are far too many half-developed plotlines that initially seem to have some importance, but fade away halfway through the book.

The biggest problem, however, seems to be an utter lack of emotion. The characters have no passion. It seems almost like they KNOW they're only characters in a book, and no matter what happens in the end, it doesn't really matter in the scheme of things. Their attempts at emotion fall flat, and even the death of several dragons- an event that, in Anne's books, was enough to emotionally devastate a character- seems to be forgotten after a few pages.

Crucial details also seem to be missing. In Anne's Pern, you can see the vivid blue of the Harper's clothing, smell the spicy scent of dragons in their weyrs, and taste the bubblies. In Todd's Pern, however, everything seems to be a flat, dull gray, with very little in the way of scent or sound, and even after reading the entire book, I had no idea what most of the characters looked like.

Todd has potential- you really, really want to like and feel for the characters, and there's always a small part of you that wants to find out what happens next- but he just doesn't reach it in Dragonsblood. He is fairly good with plot and pacing, but he desperately needs to work on a few other areas. Perhaps his next attempt will do better.

Disappointing and frustrating, I sadly say. And I say this as a loving loyal Pernese.

Page after page I was hoping for a breakthrough, something truly original, to reflect the creative mind of Todd. Instead, he regurgitates ideas from previous books, written by his mom. His first visit to Pern - "Dragon Kin" was to be tolerated. Now, without his mom, I found myself moving from page to page, desperately hoping for an original idea, a surprise, SOMETHING.

Instead, I was reminded of Breke's loss of her dragon, Lessa's survival as a drudge among other great moments that made Pern's book what they are for me - a great reading.

The psychology of mother-daughter relations or the complexes associated with scared or disfigured face, Asian culture and values, none of these is enough to make this book meet the challenge of the standard set by Anne McCaffrey. Robington's relations with his father and redeeming him through his relationship with Menoly's set a high standard for that, as did Jaxom's relationship with Laytol. The weaving of the psyches of the characters in this book doesn't even come close to that.

Please, read it if you, like me, must read anything Pernese. Once you are done, try to forget it. Eventually, the bad after taste will go away.