Customer Reviews

The Skies Of Pern

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

As a long-time major fan of Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, I gleefully pounce on them the moment they appear in hardback. In fact, they're the ONLY novels I'll routinely shell out so much money for. In the case of "The Skies of Pern", I managed to get my hands on the UK version...

Was it worth it? Definitely! I'd've downed it in one marathon sitting were it not for having to go to work and earn a living. And I reread it the following week. All 450 pages of it!

Once again Ms. McCaffrey visits our old friends in the Ninth Pass, picking up where "The Dolphins of Pern" leaves off. We get to see how they deal with the perils of anti-technology fanatics ("Abominators"), the uncertainties of the role dragons will play in a Thread-free world and Lord Toric's endless greed and conniving. A major new threat faces Pern from above, and the dragons have to come up with a novel and surprising way of dealing with it. A way hinted at in earlier books, particularly "All the Weyrs of Pern".

Along the way, Ms. McCaffrey does her usual excellent job of developing characters both old and new. Be prepared for a real tear-jerker toward the end.

So, if you're a Pern fan, this one is a must! While you're waiting for this one to arrive, you might want to dust off your copy of "All the Weyrs" and "Dolphins" just to refresh your memory and whet your appetite.

My only hope is that the next installment comes soon.

I love Pern. I've loved Pern since the first books have come out. I've read and re-read every book so many times that I have a list of all the typos and chronological "boo-boos" in each one. But I still love Pern and the wonderful dragons.

The Skies of Pern is a fair book. It takes me back to Pern and I get to meet all my old friends again. See how they've grown, what new changes are taking place. It's like going home again.

But there are some major descrepancies that just cannot be ignored. For these four serious blunders I have to give only three stars instead of five.

Blunder No. One: Lady Lessa. Lady?? Since when is Weyrwoman Lessa called Lady? She is not a Holder's wife. She gave up the right to be Holder of Ruatha at Jaxom's birth. Aivas called her Lady once and was trounced quickly as to her real title and rank. She is Weyrwoman or Ramoth's Rider. This is a very serious mistake. How can Anne not remember the titles and ranks of her own characters??

Blunder No. Two: Golly. The noble bronze dragon Golanth is called "Golly"? In Dragon's Dawn the first dragons clearly let it be known that they will not tolerate nicknames. The dolphins might shorten a name due to pronunciation, but for the humans to pick up on it and follow along is wrong. It demeans the dragon.

Blunder No. Three: Mirrim. OK, to be honest here, I can't stand Mirrim. I didn't like her in DragonQuest, I tolerated her in Dragonsong, and I wished she had been banished to the Far Reaches in White Dragon. But she keeps popping back up like a really bad penny. I like Toric more then Mirrim. But besides all that. What is she doing being a weyrleader? She is only a green dragon rider. Where is the Queen Dragon of Eastern? Who is the Queen dragon of Eastern? Where does this bizarre menage a trois start? Have I missed a short story somewhere where all this is explained?

Blunder No. Four: When did the Runners Guild become a player? Seems to me that we should have had some inkling of them back in the very first book. They might have come in handy when F'Lar was trying to figure out a way to communicate with all the holds before Thread started falling. At least in Renegades of Pern, Anne started the Traders Guild back at the beginning and slowly brought them forward with the rest of the story. But in Skies of Pern we are thrown in with a very major guild and left to wonder who they are??!

I loved the book for the fact that it did take me back to Pern. But there were some major "wrongs" that I just can't ignore. So I stand by my assessment of Three out of Five stars.

The Skies of Pern strikes me as analogous to a flight of inexperienced dragonriders, each of whom independently tries to burn every bit of thread falling from the red star, resulting in a great deal of confusion and not exactly 100% success. It seems as though McCaffrey is struggling to come up with enough story lines to fill a novel and, while she does achieve that goal, she fails to integrate the various stories into a composite whole. Were this book a student essay, I would have to say that it lacks unity.

There are several potentially wonderful narrative themes in the book. We have the sabotage and vandalism wreaked by the Abominators, who are determined to stop and reverse the many technological innovations initiated by AIVAS, the artificial intelligence system brought by the original colonists and lately rediscovered. We have the huge tsunami generated by the impact of a comet fragment that plunges into Pern's sea and the heroic efforts of the dragons to rescue the land bound holders. We encounter the depredations of the giant felines on the Southern Continent. Running somewhat weakly through everything else is the angst of the dragonriders who fret about what they will do, now that threadfall is nearly at an end forever.

Except for the dragonriders' fretting, which grows quite tedious, any of the story lines could have been detailed and developed into a wonderful novel-length work, but none is pursued to any great depth. Instead, they are strung together like a weakly constructed anthology of unrelated events. This is not to say that the book does not have some delightful high points, both dramatic and humorous. The result of Golanth's first "heavy-handed" attempts to practice the dragons' newly recognized skill of telekinesis by moving trundlebugs is hilarious. The dialog (dragonlog?) between Golanth and Zaranth is frequently amusing and often touching. The terror and drama of the felines' attack on Golanth, his rider F'lessan, Zaranth, and her rider Tai are well delivered, and the novel becomes a veritable page-turner at that point. Unfortunately, we are then nearing the end of the book and are disappointed that the increased tempo is over so soon.

I have enjoyed reading almost all of McCaffrey's books, and I would not have wanted to miss The Skies of Pern. Still, I wish that it had become three different novels, each one dealing with one of great story lines in depth. The fourth line, that of the dragonriders' search for a meaningful existence in the post-thread era, would be better forgotten entirely. Turning them all into astronomers is not precisely a convincing solution to their pending unemployment problem. Still, for its faults and weaknesses, The Skies of Pern deserves to be read by those who have come to know the dragons of Pern. Newcomers to the series, however, will be more pleased to seek out McCaffrey`s earlier works on this fascinating planet.

This book deals with the question of how Dragonriders would continue to play a role in Pernese society once thread is gone and Takes up more or less where All the Weyrs of Pern had left off. The dragonriders had made sure that they staked out a huge chunk of the southern continent for their future needs so that they would not be dependent on holders after the last pass ends. Still, there are hints that things could be dicey for them in the future as Pernses society evolves. Certainly, many dragonrides in earlier books have been capable of greed and meglomania. Could future generations of dragonriders be drawn into the disputes of holders as Pern fills up and industrializes and the threat of thread no longer requires everyone to (mostly) stick together? Will dragons' fertility decline the way they did in long passes and eventually dwindle to nothing? Could future generations of dragonriders fight with holders or even each other for resources once usable land starts to run out? Will Pern begin to experience some of the environmental issues that Earth had once Pern begins to industrialize somewhat (and cut down its tropical rainforests)and its population is no longer constrained by the need for thread protection? Is it possible that Pernese could eventually try to go back to the stars or perhaps become industrialized ebough that they could be rediscovered by spacefaring humans? Could dragonkind be of assistance to space travelers as they were in All the Weyrs of Pern and would greedy and unscrupulous people from elsewhere perhaps want to exploit draconic abilties? Could all this lead to new opportunities? It's occurred to me that any or all of these questions could make excellent future novels that could depart somewhat from the patterns of earlier noves (potential spoiler follows).

But very conveniently, a comet splashes down on Pern. Dragonriders are able to mitigate much of the tragedy thanks to draconic abilities. Now future generations of dragonriders have a uniting purpose that will be as compelling as thread...watching the skies for meteors or comets and using draconic abilites to deflect them. Although the story is suspenseful and well enough plotted, this is a bit too pat for me (comets are few and far between and if dragonriders grew indolent and the holders forgetful during long intervals, then surely the erratic and even longer intervals between comet or meteor srikes would cause interest in these projects to lose steam quickly). I suppose it does not forsestall the possibility of the issues mentioned above still being raised in a future novel.

The most interesting aspect of this book was the development of F'lessan's character at last. Despite being the biological son of Lessa and F'lar (though not raised by them), he was always a minor character in earlier novels (though the subject of one short story). He was likeable but a bit "feckless". In this story he grows up, finds love and suffers (though how even 2 large bioengineered tigers could seriously injure a dragon the size of a L10-11 jet and his rider is a bit of a puzzler). Tai is a nice introduction as she is an interesting character. At last, young women are being allowed to impress the green dragons again (it was never explained fully why homosexual or effeminite men can impress greens (and presumably the blues and browns who often fly them) and are available in such large numbers on Pern but homosexual or emmasculate women never end up with blues or browns, even as an occasional accident). Green dragons, somewhat looked down upon in previous books, turn out to have interesting abilities after all.

Recent McCaffrey dragonrider novels are collaborations with (or written by) her son Todd and focus on the time around the second pass. The skies of Pern had a too-convenient comet and left the dragonriders with a purpose, but it ended kind of abruptly and left enough questions about the future of Pern that I find myself hoping that maybe there will be at least one more novel set in the 9th pass (and possibly the time afterwards).

In the original six books for this world, McCaffrey offered us an enticing concept with sentient dragons in partnership with humans and a world-wide threat (Thread) that served to alternately unite and divide various elements of her society.

Unfortunately, the weaknesses of plot and characterization that I've been determined to avoid seeing in the previous books hit me smack in the face with this one. More like an amateur effort at copying McCaffrey's style than a book by the same author of the rest of the series, The Skies of Pern draws heavily on the same cliched character devices McCaffery includes in all her books while taking her episodic style of writing to a dizzying and confusing extreme.

Less than a hundred pages into the book, I would have paid double the cover price for a timeline listing what was happening and who was involved. The action skipped around in time and changed POV character so frequently that you need a scorecard to remind yourself who was involved in what particular scene.

She has littered the landcape of this novel with characters familiar from previous books, without managing to make their contribution to the plot either compelling or convincing.

The plot itself is contrived and suffers from an excess of exposition as the characters deliver huge chunks of mathematical explanation for various stellar or planetary events. Such indegestible chunks are both unnecessary to the plot and out of place in the universe the story inhabits. Quite frankly, those passages read as though the author had a minimum word count to reach for the novel and was desperate to add a few hundred words here and there.

Characterization is always predictable for this series, since each book features a selected Abuse Victim who is destined to Rise Above Adversity in the end and Save The World. And, yes, the way she writes, you can almost read the capitals in the speeches designed to clue you in on how badly this or that person has been treated by life. But never fear...they'll triumph in the end, probably with a scene so treacly that your teeth will be glued together for hours afterwards.

In closing, I can't describe how disappointed I was with this book. Amateurish, poorly plotted with clumsy exposition and lifeless dialogue, it was more like a first effort by a teenager than the work of a mature, experienced author.

In All the Wyers of Pern Anne McCaffrey concluded the saga of the "modern" descendants of the colonists who settled the far-off planet Pern. There was a nice, neat finish. With the red planet successfully diverted to another orbit, never again to bring "thread" into the skies of Pern after the current "fall" is over, the original colonists' artificial intelligence computer had completed its last program as assigned by the colonists before they fled the landing site for safer lands in the north. Knowing that the current residents of Pern needed to find their own way now that the AI had helped them recover their lost history and helped them to start their own renaissance, the AI turns itself off, leaving only an appropriate quote from Ecclesiastes on the screen. MasterHarper emeritus Robinton realized what had happened and laid down his own burdens, after serving for many years as the grand old man of Pern, and responsible for much of the good things that had happened on Pern throughout the series. A most satisfactory ending. In the acknowledgments for The Skies of Pern McCaffrey notes that she was encouraged to "keep to the `real' story line" rather than "go off on tangents because there are so many people on Pern." Indeed, McCaffrey's stories, filling in gaps in the history and fully developing some of the "minor" characters have been most enjoyable. I have considered these to be the potatoes to enhance the meat of the main story line. Returning to the main line, however, McCaffrey has provided us with an excellent epilogue. A meteor strike on the prison hold of Crom results in the escape of one of the conservatives who attempted earlier to destroy the Aivas He organizes an active, but still covert, rebellion against the "abominations" brought on by the new learning. Another, large meteor strike causes large scale damage, mitigated by the dragon riders and the new astronomers, largely dragon riders, who used information from Aivas to project the impact areas. The younger generation of dragon riders are active in this novel, and they establish themselves and their future after the end of threadfall. All in all, a most satisfactory epilogue.

I was so excited when I heard this book was comming out. I got it as soon as possible, and ran home to read it. It was not as good as her earlier works. Having solved the major PERN hazzard, Thread, in the last novel, she had to come up with a new problem. To me it was unclear how a possible random astroid would cause the planet's people to contine to pull together, and I did not feel that she answered her own delimas completly.

If you love the PERN novels, by all means read this one. But I recommend borrowing it from the library, this is not one you will want to re-read numorous times.

For Anne, it was average at best. First the things I liked: I liked the fact that there's finally more character development again (F'lessan and Tai), and the interactions between Golanth and Zaranth.

Things that bothered me:

1. While I understand that surgery was a Very Cool Thing for the Pernese to be learning and starting to use, I thought it was rather... convenient... that F'lessan needed those services. Which leads me into my #1 gripe about the whole book that knocked the two stars off the top:
2. If the dragons could 'time it' back to save all those folks from the tsunami waves, which was hours back, why the heck couldn't Ramoth, or Ruth, or Mnementh, or Path, or ANY FREAKING DRAGON WHO HAD BRAINS THAT SHOWED UP just 'time it' back *before* the cats even attacked? Hello? What's the point of timing it back milliseconds, for crying out loud? And if they couldn't do it riderless, Jaxom/Ruth know perfectly well how to jump backwards in time to any point they so desire to.
3. Yes, yes... I know that they needed someone to practice all their newfound surgical skills on. Including a dragon.
4. But give me a break.

I didn't mind the jumping around between the different sections much; I figured that meant that there was at least a sequel planned. <grin> But to make 'Skies' a better and seemingly more cohesively written book, another one (or two) definitely need to be written to tie everything together.

I'll buy it in hardback to keep my collection complete, but I think I'll be haunting the clearance tables. I highly doubt it will be one I'll pick up to reread any time soon.

It has been many years since Anne MacCaffrey came out with a forward-moving story for her Pern novels .... I really enjoyed this book, and had trouble putting it down.

The story focuses around F'lessan, bronze rider of Gollanth, and only son of the Benden Weyrleaders Lessa and F'lar. It also has the requsite unsure, talented, young girl (this time dragonrider of green Zaranth), who must learn to stand up for herself. And of course, all the political intrigue (new Lords Holder and Weyrleaders to replace retired/deceased older leaders, and as a new threat, The Abominators -- those who oppose AIVAS innovation as polluting Pern's "purity" of tradition) and powerplays (Southern's power-hungry Lord Holder, Toric). Yes, it's a familiar formula, but it at least moves the timeline forward a and answers the question of what Dragonriders will do when thread will no longer fall on Pern.

...the story moved back and forth in time didn't bother me... the dragons were, after all, "timing it" during that section of the story. And yes, the solution to Dragonriders' occupation after the Present Pass seems degrading by comparison to their present duties, but it does make sense. BTW, the book did have there is one scene that drew tears to my eyes... something I haven't done with the Pern series since Robinton and his fire lizard died in _All the Weyrs of Pern_.

My main complaint is that I expected this to be the last of the Pern novels. Instead, it has the ending leaves the door open for *many* new sequels. ....

Not everyone liked this book, apparently, but I did. I thought that Ms. McCaffrey's (and, to an extent, F'lessan and Tai's) solution to the "What will dragons do now?" problem was original and it made wonderful sense. I thought that it ranked high up there, along with the rest of the Pern series. If you're a Pern fan and you've been waiting to see what will/would happen after "All the Weyrs of Pern", then read this.

I had one disappointment. The whole gang of familiar characters returned (with the exception of Robinton, of course, but it's obvious he's missed), even Jayge at one point, but what happened to Piemur and Jancis? I was dying to know what happened to the two of them, where they settled down, that sort of thing (or maybe they mentioned it somewhere and I forgot). Oh well, F'lessan is one of my favorites, and Tai's a great character with an interesting situation, and the book is well worth the twenty bucks for the hardcover version. Read it.