book review - Dragon's Fire

As promised, as I read the books that are on my list I will give a short review. The latest read was Dragon's Fire, another collabortion between Anne McCaffrey and her son Todd. Todd obviously has lots of ideas for where he wants the series to go and we are being introduced to different elements of Pern.

In their previous book, Dragon's Kin, it was the watch whers. In this one it's a discourse on stone with some delving into murder, thievery, and other unsavory aspects of human character.

I also wonder if there are any other handicaps coming up but won't say more because I don't want to give anything away. I will say that the first time was okay, the second time was trite and if there is a third time where someone with a particular handicap overcomes that handicap to become something that would otherwise be impossible (due to their handicap) I will be disappointed. Anne herself wrote about it in her short story "The Girl Who Heard Dragons" but it got carried a bit further in these last two books.

I confess that overall I liked the story but mostly I think it was because I like the whole world of Pern. I was disappointed that some of the events in the book seemed contrived and, as with the last one, the ending winds up feeling very rushed. One thing I did like a lot about the book was how parts of it parrallelled the previous book. Unfortunately I found lots of odd shifts in the story line and suspect that they are there simply to provide openings into future books rather than because they really add to the story line.

One more in the "new" series to go.