Dragonsinger - Chapter Ten and Eleven.

[kalinara]

So last time, nothing happened. It sort of LOOKED like something would happen. But it didn't.

I genuinely think the problem is Robinton. I think that Ms. McCaffrey can't bear the idea of Robinton being wrong or flawed, so there was no chance that he might mistake the fair incident as being remotely Menolly's fault. (...even though it partly was.) WE know Menolly's a good girl, so Robinton knows that too.

Amusingly, by immediately dismissing Menolly's accusers and taking her side BEFORE getting everyone's version of events, Robinton actually looks like a biased git and a terrible headmaster. It would have been very easy to have Robinton listen to Pona and her paramour's version of events, and build up some anxiety and tension for Menolly, and then have the tanner, who is a neutral third party, back up Menolly's version of events. But Robinton doesn't even bother with that. This would have been interesting if it were intentional, but I am reasonably sure there will be no follow through.

It's just like how the book refuses to let Menolly face real sexism in her quest to become the first female Harper in Pern. There actually IS a lot of built in sexism in the system, but McCaffrey won't acknowledge that because it would mean that Robinton isn't doing what he should be doing to combat it. Menolly therefore gets to bypass the worst of the unfair treatment, rather than actually face it.

It's very frustrating because we're at the penultimate chapter of a book that SHOULD have been great. I like Menolly, and I want her to succeed. I'm invested in seeing a woman overcome obstacles and become the first female Harper. I enjoyed Dragonsong a lot. I expected to love this book too.

I don't.

( Well, this book has two more chapters to change my mind. )

Dragonsinger - Verdict

[kalinara]

The direct prequel of this book, Dragonsong, is one of two passing grades I've given out at this blog. I had high hopes that Dragonsinger would follow suit.

Sadly, unlike its predecessor, I do not think Dragonsinger passes the test of time. Let's talk about why.

As usual, whenever I review a sequel, I like to evaluate it on that basis first. So let's start there:

Is it consistent with what came before?

Eh, yes. Mostly. This is a direct sequel to Dragonsong, and like that book, it runs concurrently with Dragonquest, specifically, the Red Star run.

Does the book give us a wider (or narrower but different) focus of the setting?

Sure, we're getting our in depth look at a particular Craft and Crafthall. And like Dragonsong, we get to see what life on Pern is like for people who aren't riding dragons.

Are the returning characters consistent, and new characters developed?

Ehhhh.

Okay, Menolly and Robinton are consistent at least. I found Menolly occasionally frustrating, but for the most part, she remains the quietly competent and slightly melodramatic teenager that she was in Dragonsong.

I feel like Robinton was portrayed as considerably more competent in prior books, but then again, we didn't exactly see him in charge of a Crafthall in prior books, so I can't say its inconsistent.

The thing is, ultimately, I didn't feel a very strong connection between Dragonsinger and Dragonsong, which is a little ridiculous given that one starts immediately after the other ended.

Menolly spent a good half of Dragonsong making new friends and forming tight bonds with people in Benden Weyr, and none of this was mentioned at all in Dragonsinger. Manora tended to Menolly's feet for days or weeks. Mirrim and T'gellan were close friends. Felena offered to adopt Menolly! But none of this was worth even a moment of thought from Menolly.

Hell, Menolly has apparently even forgotten that Mirrim was her friend at all, given that she's busy telling Audiva that she's never had a female friend before. I know they bickered at the end of the story, but still.

Poor Elgion too. He was basically second protagonist in Dragonsong, but here he might as well not exist at all. He was fairly young, you'd think some of his old colleagues might have asked after him.

To put my feelings about this in perspective, I felt more of a connection between Dragonflight and Dragonquest, and that involved a complete shift of primary protagonist, seven years in between, and every single Oldtimer getting a personality transplant.

So as a sequel, I don't know, it doesn't really work for me.

Now let's evaluate it on its own merit.

Plot:

None.

Next category...

Okay, I suppose I can elaborate. None of this is new, if you've been keeping up with my rants, but okay. The blunt truth is that there is no plot to this book. There is no momentum. There's no conflict. There's no growth.

Oh, McCaffrey plays lip service to the idea of conflict. There are teachers that don't seem to like Menolly. But conveniently, these teachers never end up in a position of power over Menolly. Morshal might be THE music theory teacher, but Menolly has already learned it all from Petiron. Domick and Shonagar are gruff, but only because they see potential in her. That said, even Domick doesn't do any real teaching. Menolly has all of three classes with the guy, and most of them seem to involve impressing him by playing his new song without trouble.

There's a "not like other girls" set up, but that never really goes anywhere. Menolly is meant to live in Dunca's cot, but it's not like Dunca has any real authority over her. Dunca yells, and Menolly brushes that off. Dunca sabotages her once by not telling her about Domick's order, which is more stupid than anything else. Menolly was easily able to prove she didn't get the message. And even if Domick had believed that Dunca had given Menolly the message, Robinton would have never let him actually dismiss her.

Pona isn't even that effective. The most she manages to do is accuse Menolly of stealing, and Pona is the one who promptly gets kicked out of Harper Hall. She's not a rival: her musical skill isn't advanced enough for that. Her connections are pointless, because Menolly has already befriended Robinton and Groghe instantly adores her. Pona is an irritant at best.

Beyond that...Menolly goes to class where she wows her instructors. Okay. We see ONE subject where she's not immediately amazing: singing. But Dragonsinger takes place over such a short amount of time that that ends up pointless too. Menolly may not be a Piemur level singer, but she's good enough to impress at the gather. She's good enough to apparently make Journeyman rank. We can't really credit Shonagar for that, because, while he did explain a few techniques, there's not a lot that can be learned in one week.

I said this in my last review, but the biggest problem in the plot is that Menolly is being rewarded for things she did before this book. She's a fantastic musician. Great, but she learned those skills with Petiron in Dragonsong. She's a great fire lizard trainer, which is something she learned to do in Dragonsong. She wrote her most famous song in Dragonsong.

She does write a new song, but it's not like we get to see her struggle with it! She basically hears Brekke's psychic scream, and realizes that she can make a chord that reminds her of it, and the song writes itself. It'd be one thing if we got to see her thinking about the changes Robinton made to her Fire Lizard song and incorporating that, but we don't even see that.

Everything comes easy to Menolly in this book. There's no challenge. There's no suspense. She's already done the quest, now she's reporting in for her reward.

The gather is the biggest disappointment. It's the closest thing we get to a climax. But even then, nothing comes of it. Pona accuses Menolly of stealing, and there's a fight. Robinton shows up and immediately believes Menolly. Groghe shows up and doesn't care about the event at all. Pona is immediately kicked out, and for all of Menolly's anxiety afterward, we never see her again.

What's the point?

I thought we were going to get a book about a talented girl learning to become the first female Harper. I expected to see her take on institutionalized sexism, to prove her ability and her determination, and to work hard to refine her craft and become amazing.

Instead, I got a book about a girl who gets to bypass all of the institutionalized sexism because she was lucky enough to have the right tutor before the series began, who already knows every skill she could possibly need, and learns absolutely nothing!

This isn't the story I was promised and Menolly deserves better.

Characters:

So the plot is non-existent. Let's talk about characters.

Menolly is Menolly. She's likable and competent. But she coasts through this book and it's very frustrating.

Of the new characters, most of them have little to no significance. But there are a few that are worth commenting:

Piemur: As a kid, I remember resenting that the third book in the Harper Hall Trilogy was about Piemur rather than Menolly. As an adult though, I actually understand. Where does Menolly go from here? She's an awesome apprentice who will be an awesome journeyman. Okay then.

But Piemur's a boy soprano, who doesn't seem to be particularly skilled in any other field. Unless he wants to be castrated, he's not going to be able to keep that up forever. There's a genuine tension in what his fate will be in two or three years.

Sebell: I like Sebell. I think he's the one saving grace of this book. I really like his dynamic with Menolly and the way McCaffrey sets him up as Menolly's student as much as he is her instructor. And honestly, he's the only person we actually see acting like an instructor to Menolly. Robinton is useless, Domick is too busy being impressed, and Shonagar's lessons are mostly off page. Sebell is the only one that we see actually giving Menolly some hands on guidance.

I mentioned this before too, but I'm really irked by the upcoming retcon in Masterharper of Pern. Dragonsinger makes it pretty clear that Sebell is a very recent Journeyman. It's why Ranly dislikes Menolly: he thinks she got the position as Robinton's apprentice that he feels should have gone to him. McCaffrey must have realized she accidentally wrote a relationship in which the two characters are close to the same age, so we get the retcon later.

Sebell is competent, and in a lot of ways seems to be the only person actually managing things at Harper Hall, but he definitely doesn't read like a thirty-five year old who's been comfortably in his position for twenty years. So Masterharper of Pern can bite me.

(Also Masterharper of Pern is where we get the reveal that Camo is Robinton's son. I had mistakenly remembered that from this book. Oh well. Camo's treatment is still dreadful.)

Audiva: Audiva isn't really a character, but I find her interesting as a concept. She's the token sympathetic person in the group of girls. However, like Mirrim before her, I notice that she's very carefully established to be "less" than Menolly. She's less of a musician. She's lower ranked socially. And she's not really independent enough to break away from Pona.

That said, I find myself far more intrigued by Audiva's potential musical career. We're told, out of the blue and in the penultimate chapter, that unlike the other girls, Audiva actually wants to be a musician. (...this is another example of McCaffrey's issues with nuance. Notice that it's the FRIENDLY girl who wants to study music. Bitchy girls like Pona and Briala don't care. Even though they're also paying to be there.) But Audiva didn't have a Petiron.

Audiva, like Pona and Briala, is learning her musical theory from a man who doesn't want to teach girls. She's learning musical craft from a young journeyman who doesn't want to be there. And as we saw from Menolly, who graduates to Journeyman just from being really good at music, there doesn't seem to be any attempt at teaching anyone HOW to teach.

Audiva's living in a cot under the authority of a woman who seems to care very little about the Harper Hall in general. There's no indicator that any of the girls practice their instruments, or that Dunca would allow it. Robinton and company don't seem to know she's alive, so they can't or won't pull strings for her. How is Audiva supposed to become a good musician with all of these things stacked against her?

I want that story.

The Other Students: Sadly, they're all pretty interchangeable, and I'd be very surprised if we see any of them again. Maybe Ranly might show up to be obnoxious in Piemur's book or something.

The Instructors: Wasted opportunity, all of them. They're cartoon characters. The only one with any real attempt at complexity is Domick, and he basically starts adoring Menolly soon enough.

Robinton (and Silvina): And here we get to the most infuriating part. Robinton is a TERRIBLE Headmaster. Silvina is a TERRIBLE headwoman. The tiny bit of almost conflict we get in this book could have been utterly avoided if either of these people ever bothered to do their fucking jobs.

Why is a man who hates girls allowed to teach them musical theory?

Why is a woman who hates fire lizards and carries petty grudges against students made to be the host of a girl who has nine of them?

Why did no one step in when Morshal gave Menolly a hard time?

Why did no one step in when Dunca actually sabotaged a student's curriculum?

Why did no one notice Menolly needed a change of clothes for three days?

Why didn't anyone ever bother to tell Menolly what she's supposed to accomplish at Harper Hall?

Why didn't anyone ever bother to explain what a Harper fucking does?!

And what DO Harpers do?

They perform music. Okay. But that isn't why F'lar has Robinton on his council. They "spread knowledge". But their curriculum seems to involve nothing resembling general education. Where is the history? Where is the politics?

These are subjects that Menolly could have actually struggled in, by the way, given her rather insular upbringing. These are areas that Menolly could have grown in. Maybe she would have even had a reason to reach out to Audiva or Pona because she would have realized how little she knows of the wider world. (Piemur is helpful to an extent, but he's a ten year old.)

From what we saw of the Journeyman assignments at the end, they're expected to take part in educating the populace, assisting with diplomacy, interfacing with other craftsmen. But apparently they're supposed to just magically sprout the knowledge of how to do this?

Maybe they're supposed to learn on the job. There was mention at least of the journeymen being assigned to other Harpers, but I feel like some general education wouldn't be amiss.

And I still feel like a big problem in all of this is that McCaffrey doesn't want to allow Robinton to be flawed. There IS institutionalized sexism in Harper Hall, but Robinton can't be a part of that, so he can't be aware of it. However, he has to be reasonably attentive to Menolly, given that he recruited her, so Menolly has to be exempt from it. The "challenges" she does face have to be beyond his knowledge, or completely unimportant.

Ultimately, I feel like Ms. McCaffrey prioritized Robinton over Menolly and sacrificed what should have been a decent story of a young girl overcoming sexism for it. (Let's not even get into how Masterharper of Pern destroys even that. Between Robinton's mother, the "MasterSinger" and Silvina who COULD have been a Harper but chose to be a Headwoman instead, does Menolly even count as the first female harper?)


In the end, this book didn't infuriate me like Jennifer Roberson's Shapechangers. It didn't exasperate me like Dragonflight or Dragonquest. It didn't have enough for that. It just made me bored and tired, and I feel like I wasted a significant chunk of time reading and reviewing a book that means basically nothing.

In the grand biography of Menolly's life, such as it is, this whole book could be summarized in a paragraph. And that's just stupid.

So yeah, Dragonsinger is a big disappointing fail of a book. We'll have to see if the next one can perk us up. At least it might be entertainingly bad, Dragonsinger didn't even manage that.