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The Dragonriders of Pern: Dragonflight Dragonquest The White Dragon (Pern: The Dragonriders of Pern) Kindle Edition
DRAGONFLIGHT
On a beautiful world called Pern, an ancient way of life is about to come under attack. Lessa is an outcast survivor—her parents murdered, her birthright stolen—a strong young woman who has never stopped dreaming of revenge. But when an ancient threat reemerges, Lessa will rise—upon the back of a great dragon with whom she shares a telepathic bond more intimate than any human connection. Together, dragon and rider will fly, and Pern will be changed forever.
DRAGONQUEST
Since Lessa and Ramoth, her golden queen dragon, traveled into the past to bring forward a small army of dragons and riders to save their world from deadly alien spores, fear and desperation have spread across the land. But while the dragonriders struggle with threats both human and otherworldly, a young rider named F’nor and his brown dragon, Canth, hatch a bold plan to destroy the alien scourge at its source—the baleful Red Star that fills the heavens and promises doom to all.
THE WHITE DRAGON
Never in the history of Pern has there been a dragon like Ruth. Mocked by other dragons for his small size and pure white color, Ruth is smart, brave, and loyal—qualities that he shares with his rider, the young Lord Jaxom. Unfortunately, Jaxom is also looked down upon by his fellow lords, and by other riders as well. His dreams of joining the dragonriders in defending Pern are dismissed. What else can Jaxom and Ruth do but strike out on their own, pursuing in secret all they are denied? But in doing so, the two friends will find themselves facing a desperate choice—one that will push their bond to the breaking point . . . and threaten the future of Pern itself.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDel Rey
- Publication dateMarch 28, 2002
- File size8426 KB
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From the Publisher
Product details
- ASIN : B000RH0E70
- Publisher : Del Rey; Reprint edition (March 28, 2002)
- Publication date : March 28, 2002
- Language : English
- File size : 8426 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 852 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #53,353 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #151 in Time Travel Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #210 in Time Travel Fiction
- #605 in Science Fiction Adventure
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Anne McCaffrey, the Hugo Award-winning author of the bestselling Dragonriders of Pern® novels, is one of science fiction's most popular authors. With Elizabeth Ann Scarborough she co-authored Changelings and Maelstrom, Books One and Two of The Twins of Petaybee. McCaffrey lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in County Wicklow, Ireland.
Photo by Anna Creech from Ellensburg, WA (Anne McCaffrey signing. Cropped prior to upload.) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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The world building is superb and over the course of the 3 books and many subsequent books, the abilities of the dragons is well explained in a logical, non-supernatural manner. Briefly, when men settled on the planet of Pern thousands of years ago, the presence of a wandering planet was noted but not explored. As a result, after the colony had been there for several hundred years, the wandering planet, named the "Red Star" by the Pernese, came close enough to Pern to have some of its native life forms travel the distance between the worlds and fall from the skies of Pern as "Thread", a deadly life form that resembles silver threads and which sears through everything it touches that isn't metal, clay or stone. The original colonists altered and enhanced the DNA of "fire lizards", a native life form that resembled small dragons, who had the ability to travel vast distances in the blink of an eye by going "Between" and who further had rudimentary telepathic skills. Over the millenniums, the dragons increased in size until by the time the stories in the books take place, they could grow to over 120 ft. for the largest, the golden Queen dragon.
***POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD***
The first book, Dragonflight, opens with Lessa, the last of the "Blood", i.e., a direct descendant of the Lord (owner) of Rautha Hold on the planet of Pern, being found by the dragonriders who are on search for a candidate for the queen egg that's waiting to hatch. Although the author has given Lessa several paranormal gifts in this first book, they aren't focused on too much and not at all in subsequent books.
When the dragonriders found Lessa, her aim had been to claim their assistance to take back the Ruathan Hold which had been taken over by an ambitious lord, Fax, who slew all who had even a shred of Rauthan blood. She had hidden in the lair of the watchweyr and had avoided discovery. She causes the head dragonrider, F'Lar, to challenge Fax to a duel, but afterwards ends up relinquishing her hereditary rights to Jaxom, the newborn son of Fax and Gemma, a distant Rauthan kinswoman, while she travels to Benden Weyr to hopefully become the head Weyrwoman. When the dragon eggs hatched, the dragonets found a suitable partner from among the candidates by "Impressing" with their choice. The bond thus established was lifelong and extremely close, with the partners sharing both thoughts and emotions.
Thread had not fallen on Pern for over 400 years, instead of the usual interval of 200 years. F'Lar, the leader of Benden Weyr was instinctively sure that Thread was due to fall soon and wanted a strong Weyrwoman who would be up for the coming challenge. There were 6 Weyrs on Pern, but 5 of them had been abandoned for hundreds of years and no one knew why. In addition, the previous Queen rider was lazy and the Queen dragon matched her; therefore, the size of the clutches of eggs had not been increasing like they should have been. He hoped that a Queen impressed by Lessa would be strong and would be flown by a strong bronze (hopefully, his bronze dragon) so that the Queen would have larger clutches and one or more queen eggs in each clutch.
***END OF POSSIBLE SPOILERS***
So this sets the stage for the story, although I have included information that you'll actually discover later in the book so I could more easily describe the current situation. What follows are 3 books that describe actions that take place in a rapidly changing environment. There are fights among dragonriders (a no-no because if a rider dies, his dragon goes Between and never comes back), exciting discoveries of items used by the "Ancients", lost knowledge that has been discovered and recovered, showdowns between differing factions and puzzles posed for Lessa that she has to solve.
Each book in the series has action, drama, comedic situations, love and moving situations that call forth emotions that may cause you to shed a tear or two. Once you read these 3 books, you may well want to read the rest of the stories written by Anne. Her son Todd has also written several Pern novels, although I didn't like them as well as Anne's books.
Finally, I'll be writing a separate review for books 2 (Dragonquest) and and 3 (The White Dragon) that you may want to refer to as well. Enjoy!
A suggestion for new readers: This trilogy contains 3 novels: Dragonflight, Dragon Quest and The White Dragon. In between Dragon Quest and The White Dragon there is ANOTHER trilogy called the HARPER HALL TRILOGY. Read that before The White Dragon or the book will have some obvious "huh?" moments. The White Dragon is in actuality the SIXTH book of a six-book series and won't make a lot of sense unless you read the Harper Hall Trilogy first. So I'd recommend ordering the Dragonriders and Harper Hall trilogy at the same time. Currently they're both available on Amazon in hardcover for reasonable price. However they can be difficult to get hold of, so if you find them available, don't procrastinate. The entire six books are well worth a read... as well as the remainder of the Dragonriders series. These DO have a well-formed and very satisfying conclusion in later books, making (I believe) nine primary books (and many sub-books written by Todd McCaffrey). The primary 9 (10...12?) are my favorites and conclude very nicely with everything tied together and explained.
If there is one dislike I have about the entire series, its a decidedly repetitive "evil Lord Holder" theme that tends to re-appear. But that can be forgiven considering the delightful concept and well-fleshed characters Anne presents in her series. If these books don't bring tears to your eyes at least two or three times during the series... dragons don't really exist. And of course, WE know they do. : )
































