All the Weyrs of Pern - Chapter Twenty

[kalinara]

Last time, the Dragonriders saved the world. With some offensively unnecessary secret keeping!

( I still don't get why people who risk their lives every day can't be told they're risking their lives harder... )

All the Weyrs of Pern - Verdict

[kalinara]

So, I've made it to the end of what I always considered to be the real third book of the Dragonrider Trilogy. White Dragon was always a side story at best. THIS is the story where we actually see the our major plot threads, heh, resolved.

So how is it?

Overall I'd give it a passing grade.

That's probably surprising, considering that most prominent characters of this book are the ones I hate most. It involves a massive revamp of the setting, with complete genre shift, and a SHIT ton of info dumps and very dry, long parts of accomplishing very little.

But somehow it does work for me. When you look at the trilogy on a whole, Dragonflight establishes a threat that is eternal, unknowable, and existential. It was gone for a long time, but has now returned, and these characters have to both use the old knowledge that they've half forgotten, and develop new ways to deal with this threat that they're ill prepared for.

In Dragonquest, we see how they've been coping. They're surviving, but not thriving. Innovation comes hand in hand with reversion and conservativism. The dragonriders are not united. And when they try to find a solution to Thread with the knowledge and resources they have at hand, it goes very badly.

(It occurs to me that F'nor dying here would be much more dramatically appropriate than his surviving, but that's beside the point.)

Now in All the Weyrs of Pern, they do finally end up in a position to end Thread, even though they have to fundamentally change their society and their lives to do it.

I can definitely appreciate that. And I think, overall, it does well. I'm not pleased with the elements of elitism that pop up here and there. McCaffrey doesn't seem to believe that common people deserve any interest or entitlement to knowledge or self-determination. Secrets are kept needlessly from people whose lives are being directly affected and they're blamed for not reacting like they have relevant knowledge.

It's frustrating.

I do think that there's more effort made here to show that folks with differing viewpoints aren't all cartoon characters. Nerat, Sigomal, they're pretty one-dimensional. But we do have people like Corman, who I assumed would be another antagonist from his intro, that are actually treated like rational, reasonable people with a consistent ideology. It's weird to praise that, but it's fucking rare in this series.

I can definitely sympathize with the folks frustrated by the shift in genre, but I think it was really necessary if we were ever going to see an actual resolution to Thread. We do have Eight other passes, and the first twenty years of the Ninth Pass to enjoy the fantasy setting after all.

--

As for characters, as mentioned, the lead two are the two I hate most. McCaffrey bends over backward to give Robinton any kind of significance at all, and I'd resent that more if Lytol wasn't there too. But it's very clear that Robinton is the important one of the three.

(I'd probably resent that LESS if Jaxom weren't the other primary character, and Lytol weren't the man who RAISED him. There's very little reference to that here.)

To be fair, Robinton was mostly inoffensive here. And even Jaxom was more tolerable for most of the book, since he had shit to actually do and wasn't obsessed over no one knowing about his stupid egg heroics. But I'm still mad about all the pointless secret keeping at the end.

And I'm REALLY mad that Lessa didn't get to part of the heroic efforts. She deserved better. F'lar got sidelined, something I'd be madder about if he hadn't sabotaged Lessa. (Fuck you, F'lar.) And there's no sign of poor F'lessan anywhere. Despite being a bronze rider of sufficient age and strength that he should have been SOMEWHERE on the mission.

What does McCaffrey have against that boy? His few chapters of this book establish him to be remarkably likable and interesting. And as mentioned, I actually really liked Skies of Pern. (I thought it did a good job of keeping a mostly fantasy feel, even with the advancements left over from this book. But that's for a separate, far future review.)

Anyway, this is a less coherent verdict than usual, sorry about that, but this isn't just the end of a book, it's the end of the primary plot of the series. We'll see some prequels, one sequel, and one very annoying side story filled with massive unnecessary retcons later. But the thrust of the story is done. And overall, it was pretty satisfying.

I still want to punt Jaxom off a cliff though.