I Read What?!

There's going to be a bit of a delay on the next review because I'll be out of town for a few days for work reasons. I'm aiming to have it up on Wednesday or Thursday.

So we made it to the last short story in the bunch. "Rescue Run". I know a bit about this one, though I'm not actually sure if I've read it before. I know it's from the point of view of people who are not actually Pern settlers though, so I find that interesting.

It's been hinted to me that this might put some of the Pern colonists reactions into perspective, so I'm looking forward to that.

( It isn't that McCaffrey is a bad writer, but sometimes she seems to think what is obvious to her and her characters is obvious to the readers as well. And thus we never get some seemingly important context. )

Ugh, well, I did mention the month of May would be hectic, I think. I didn't plan to take a week off though. Oops.

Anyway, last time, we learned that Aidan has a brand new, never before seen power connected to his fake Irish side. He's also agreeing to get married, though, unlike his parents, he actually does get some say on who his spouse is. As long as it's one of his first cousins.

I'm really genuinely surprised Kellin doesn't end up with a Hapsburg jaw, that's all I'm saying.

( Inbreeding, schminbreeding. )

Huh, we've made it to the second to last short story in the book. Short stories make an interesting reviewing experience, I think, because I'm really not sure how to pace them.

The Dolphins' Bell, for example, felt pretty long and I kind of thing I rushed through it just to be done. I may not have given it as fair a shake as I could have.

And I always want to be cautious with excerpts. It's one thing when you're going chapter-by-chapter (and even then, I suspect I abuse it), but when it's a short story, I feel like I run the risk of including far more than I should.

But it is an interesting experiment!

But now, "the Second Weyr"...

( We saw Lessa's family/kingdom's origin, I think. Will this give us F'lar's? )

Feels like it's been a minute since I reviewed this book. Sorry about that. As mentioned, end of April/early May is a bit hectic for personal reasons. But that will hopefully calm down soon.

So last time, Aidan made it back to Homana-Mujhar and had a vision of Carillon. He gave a pretty good showing, considering he didn't try to tell anyone to rape his daughter for her own good.

( It's funny that all the dead Mujhars are kind of terrible... )

Okay, so I'm going to be trying to include a lot fewer excerpts when reviewing short stories. I feel vaguely guilty about including so much of the original text when doing recaps of shorter things so I'm going to try to go with more summary here.

But we'll see how it goes.

I think this is going to be another longish one like Dolphin's Bell, and that has absolutely nothing to do with my decision, of course.

( Lazy is as Lazy does... )

As mentioned in my last post, updates may be a bit more sporadic in the next few weeks. But hopefully it'll even out soon enough.

In the mean time!

Last time, Aidan met a shar tahl and got somewhat less than helpful advice. Alas.

( The only useful priest in the series is the Death-Harpist, sadly )

So last time, we read the first story in the Chronicles of Pern. In it, we see the initial survey of Pern. Not a lot happened and the characters were more interesting concepts than fully developed, but it wasn't bad.

Let's see what "The Dolphins' Bell" gives us.

( We haven't seen Dolphins much yet, though there will be a book about them. Hopefully better than Renegades of Pern... )

So last time, Aidan met an ancestor and maybe a god? Hard to say exactly, but getting a look at the Cheysuli religion more in depth is always welcome.

( Also it's interesting to see a more human, though still pretty evil, version of our very first villain... )