Tuesday 24 July 2012

FANTASY REVIEW: The Dragons of Pern 21: Sky Dragons - Anne and Todd McCaffrey

Release Date: 05/07/12

SYNOPSIS:

After a vicious plague swept through the world of Pern, there are no longer enough dragons to fight off the current onslaught of Thread, the deadly spore that falls like rain from the skies and devours everything organic in its path. Pern's last best chance to rebuild the decimated dragon population lies with a group of young dragonriders and their dragons left stranded on an unexplored island. Leadership of these dragons and riders falls to Xhinna, female rider of a blue dragon, who, as the most experienced dragonrider in the new Weyr, must earn the respect of all who follow her, as not everyone is ready to accept a female wingleader. She must solve the problem of how to get sufficient numbers of dragon eggs, although her newfangled ideas, like letting green dragons mate and lay eggs to hatch new dragons, cause uproar. All the while she must protect her people and baby dragons from the predators and, worse, traitors or all hope for Pern will be lost.


REVIEW:

With this being Anne’s final foray into the world of Pern with her son Todd, I was expecting great things, firstly because I thought that it would be polished to a diamond shine in her memory and secondly because of the overall threads that were available to develop.

What unfurled sadly was a disappointment as it felt disjointed, the characters forgettable and with so many similar sounding names, it caused no end of trouble until I started keeping a record of who was who. This only lead to greater pauses in reading and when added to an overall arc that really didn’t accomplish much in my opinion, left me feeling cheated as well as let-down. A great shame all in.



1 comment:

T. James said...

I read most of the Dragonrider books as a teenager, and really enjoying them. Putting something half-finished is not a fitting memory to a writer whose work many remember with fondness. At worst, it can seem like a cheap cash-in.