Review: DRAGONSDAWN

Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey
Book 9 of the Dragonriders of Pern series
Genre: fantasy
Format: hardback

About Dragonsdawn:

The beautiful planet Pern seemed a paradise to its new colonists - until unimaginable terror turned it into hell. Suddenly deadly spores were falling like silver threads from the sky, devouring everything - and everyone - in their path. It began to look as if the colony, cut off from Earth and lacking the resources to combat the menace, was doomed.

Then some of the colonists noticed that the small, dragonlike lizards that inhabited their new world were joining the fight against Thread, breathing fire on it and teleporting to safety. If only, they thought, the dragonets were big enough for a human to ride and intelligent enough to work as a team with a rider...

And so they set their most talented geneticist to work to create the creatures Pern so desperately needed - Dragons!

Source: Info in the About Dragonsdawn was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/465904.Dragonsdawn on 12/06/2012.

Review:

I've read the Pern books like donkey's years ago. I didn't realize I missed this one though... Reading Dragonsdawn has reminded me why I loved the Pern books so much! It's the masterful story telling quality that Anne McCaffrey is known and loved for. Her author's voice is just so compelling that it was only at the end of the book that I realized that this book didn't actually have much of a story in it! That alone tells us that the story telling quality must be really good indeed for me to miss that! The book didn't have much of a substantial or structured story where you have a beginning, a middle and an end. This book is a hodge podge of short Pern stories which are all related in the fact that all three of it are about the experiences of the first human immigrants to Pern. This book made me think that although Anne McCaffrey is such a good story teller, story building is not her strong suit, as shown by this book.

I found a fan made dragon rider art... apropos!

If you are an old Pern fan (which I am), you will lap this book up! If you are not, Dragonsdawn may not be the best book to read as an introduction to this series.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 5
Story itself = 2
Ending = 3
World building = 5
Cover art = 4
Pace = 4.5
Plot = 2

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 cherries