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i_read_whatSo last time, Ramoth laid her eggs, Lessa and F'lar finally managed to have an adult conversation with some interesting world-building, and F'lar ACTUALLY managed to act like a recognizably human being.
We haven't seen Thread yet, and we won't in this section either, but so far, the pacing is brisk enough, and these preparation sections short enough, that I don't feel like the story is dragging.
Honestly, I'm just happy to see F'lar acting like less of an asshole. He's still not good enough for Lessa by far, but it makes me a little less depressed by her prospects when he's somewhat tolerable.
So this next section is a time skip, going forward a number of months. F'lar has been giving a lot of orders, causing a great deal of consternation among his fellows, and discarding tradition right and left. And Lessa has been backing him up, admitting that she might not have respected her earlier promise to believe him until spring, but so far, he's been proven right.
Honestly, given what we've seen of the dragonriders' traditions, I can't be too sad about this.
We also learn that Ramoth has laid a grand total of forty-one eggs. WELL DONE!
We see some of the first of F'lar and Lessa's changes when it comes to the eggs, and as much as I hate F'lar, I have to admit, these seem like perfectly sensible changes. Where originally candidates only saw the eggs on the day of Impression, now they are being brought to spend time with the eggs as soon as they're hardened, so they can touch the eggs, get used to them, and be comfortable with the idea of them hatching.
Hopefully then, this will help prevent injury during Impression as the boys will know what to expect and also when to move the fuck out of the way instead of freezing in fright. Good change.
F'lar has also recruited very few werybred candidates. I have mixed feelings about that change. On one hand, it's definitely good to get more candidates that havent' been raised in the Weyr's ridiculous rape-cult culture. But I'm not sure it's a good idea to antagonize the Lords like this.
Most of the boys being in their late teens also seems like a good idea. It also makes me want to vomit, because that means that this wasn't the precedent before. We have young boys being paired to dragons and, um. When the fuck do they start mating again? Ramoth was two years old, if I recall correctly. And as we know, the riders end up mirroring their dragons.
What the fuck kind of child-rape scenario was going on here?!
Okay, F'lar. For changing that, even if that wasn't your reasoning, you may have just earned your way into my good graces. DON'T FUCK THIS UP. (Spoiler: he totally will fuck this up in a chapter or two.)
F'lar and Lessa also had Ramoth allow Kylara near the egg, with Lessa acting as her tutor. I like this set up a lot more than that creepy "Only the Weyrleader instructs the Weyrwoman" policy before. There are things that women should hear about from other women. And I bet you ten to one, Lessa will NOT allow Kylara to face a mating flight without being warned. No matter how much she might not like the woman.
We also find out that while Kylara has a loose attraction to T'bor, she still has a thing for F'lar, which makes Lessa a far more enthusiastic participant in this plan: if Kylara bonds with the Queen, after all, she'll be going to Fort Weyr.
Apparently F'lar had another reason for recruiting the holder boys though. And this...might not be a bad reason.
See, F'lar had gotten a message from Lytol (STILL the most useful person in this goddamn book) about Lord Meron making trouble. He's also spreading rumors that the dragonriders are deliberately choosing men of the Blood to weaken Family Lines.
Lessa still has mixed feelings about the baby: "Lessa frowned at the brown rider. She still found distasteful any mention of Gemma's son, now Lord of her ancestral Hold. Yet ... as she had inadvertently caused his mother's death and she could not be Weyrwoman and Lady Holder at the same time, it was fitting that Gemma's Jaxom be Lord at Ruatha."
Lessa. Honey. You did NOT cause Gemma's death. Gemma's death came about because Fax was trying to kill her by making her pregnant when she wasn't in great health or ideal age range, then dragging her place to place. The fact that she happened to go into labor while you were instigating a duel does not make it your fault.
I still would love to read an alternate universe story where Lessa became the Lady of Ruatha though.
Apparently Meron's also questioning the lack of Thread, but F'lar isn't concerned about that: he reasons that they'll hit whe it gets warmer.
So anyway, the advantage to getting holder and craft boys is that the dragonriders can then invite the boys' fathers to the Impression. This might have backfired royally if the Impression had been like Lessa's, I'd reckon, but we see the fruits of F'lar and Lessa's labor. The boys are tense, but not frightened. The dragons "looked around at the eager faces as though Pre-Impressed" - which might well have a basis, they ARE telepathic after all, and managed to find the youths of their choice. No accidents at all. And Kylara gets her dragon. While Lessa makes it clear to F'lar that it had better be T'bor's Orth flying her and not Mnementh. F'lar wisely agrees.
Well done, F'lar and Lessa.
So this was another shorter section, light on action, but with a nice little look at how F'lar and Lessa's leadership is making changes to the Weyr at large. It's cleverly done actually: Ms. McCaffrey doesn't waste time on boring details like changes to patrol or resource management. Instead, we look at one specific area that is much more fun: the hatching.
And since we saw how a hatching was run under R'gul's leadership, we can compare and contrast for ourselves. F'lar and Lessa's changes are a rousing success, and I'm willing to take Ms. McCaffrey's word that the other, more boring, changes are equally as successful. It's a nice example of how to do "show, not tell" without shoving too many extraneous details into the reader's gullet.
Lessa seems a lot more content now. She still has some understandable resentment of the baby, Jaxom, who will be soon ruling her Hold, but she's now got the co-leadership role that she was promised. This section and the last one show us that while F'lar may be the one with the grand schemes, Lessa is still an equal part of the process, supporting or challenging him as she feels appropriate.
She also seems to have come to terms with her relationship with F'lar. At the very least, she cares enough to be a little bit possessive. I still don't like this relationship or how it began, and I still wish Ms. McCaffrey had chosen any other way to write it. But I am glad that she doesn't seem unhappy.
Lytol is still the most useful character in this goddamn book.
Part 3:2 | Table of Contents | Part 3:4
We haven't seen Thread yet, and we won't in this section either, but so far, the pacing is brisk enough, and these preparation sections short enough, that I don't feel like the story is dragging.
Honestly, I'm just happy to see F'lar acting like less of an asshole. He's still not good enough for Lessa by far, but it makes me a little less depressed by her prospects when he's somewhat tolerable.
So this next section is a time skip, going forward a number of months. F'lar has been giving a lot of orders, causing a great deal of consternation among his fellows, and discarding tradition right and left. And Lessa has been backing him up, admitting that she might not have respected her earlier promise to believe him until spring, but so far, he's been proven right.
Honestly, given what we've seen of the dragonriders' traditions, I can't be too sad about this.
We also learn that Ramoth has laid a grand total of forty-one eggs. WELL DONE!
We see some of the first of F'lar and Lessa's changes when it comes to the eggs, and as much as I hate F'lar, I have to admit, these seem like perfectly sensible changes. Where originally candidates only saw the eggs on the day of Impression, now they are being brought to spend time with the eggs as soon as they're hardened, so they can touch the eggs, get used to them, and be comfortable with the idea of them hatching.
Hopefully then, this will help prevent injury during Impression as the boys will know what to expect and also when to move the fuck out of the way instead of freezing in fright. Good change.
F'lar has also recruited very few werybred candidates. I have mixed feelings about that change. On one hand, it's definitely good to get more candidates that havent' been raised in the Weyr's ridiculous rape-cult culture. But I'm not sure it's a good idea to antagonize the Lords like this.
Most of the boys being in their late teens also seems like a good idea. It also makes me want to vomit, because that means that this wasn't the precedent before. We have young boys being paired to dragons and, um. When the fuck do they start mating again? Ramoth was two years old, if I recall correctly. And as we know, the riders end up mirroring their dragons.
What the fuck kind of child-rape scenario was going on here?!
Okay, F'lar. For changing that, even if that wasn't your reasoning, you may have just earned your way into my good graces. DON'T FUCK THIS UP. (Spoiler: he totally will fuck this up in a chapter or two.)
F'lar and Lessa also had Ramoth allow Kylara near the egg, with Lessa acting as her tutor. I like this set up a lot more than that creepy "Only the Weyrleader instructs the Weyrwoman" policy before. There are things that women should hear about from other women. And I bet you ten to one, Lessa will NOT allow Kylara to face a mating flight without being warned. No matter how much she might not like the woman.
We also find out that while Kylara has a loose attraction to T'bor, she still has a thing for F'lar, which makes Lessa a far more enthusiastic participant in this plan: if Kylara bonds with the Queen, after all, she'll be going to Fort Weyr.
Apparently F'lar had another reason for recruiting the holder boys though. And this...might not be a bad reason.
See, F'lar had gotten a message from Lytol (STILL the most useful person in this goddamn book) about Lord Meron making trouble. He's also spreading rumors that the dragonriders are deliberately choosing men of the Blood to weaken Family Lines.
Lessa still has mixed feelings about the baby: "Lessa frowned at the brown rider. She still found distasteful any mention of Gemma's son, now Lord of her ancestral Hold. Yet ... as she had inadvertently caused his mother's death and she could not be Weyrwoman and Lady Holder at the same time, it was fitting that Gemma's Jaxom be Lord at Ruatha."
Lessa. Honey. You did NOT cause Gemma's death. Gemma's death came about because Fax was trying to kill her by making her pregnant when she wasn't in great health or ideal age range, then dragging her place to place. The fact that she happened to go into labor while you were instigating a duel does not make it your fault.
I still would love to read an alternate universe story where Lessa became the Lady of Ruatha though.
Apparently Meron's also questioning the lack of Thread, but F'lar isn't concerned about that: he reasons that they'll hit whe it gets warmer.
So anyway, the advantage to getting holder and craft boys is that the dragonriders can then invite the boys' fathers to the Impression. This might have backfired royally if the Impression had been like Lessa's, I'd reckon, but we see the fruits of F'lar and Lessa's labor. The boys are tense, but not frightened. The dragons "looked around at the eager faces as though Pre-Impressed" - which might well have a basis, they ARE telepathic after all, and managed to find the youths of their choice. No accidents at all. And Kylara gets her dragon. While Lessa makes it clear to F'lar that it had better be T'bor's Orth flying her and not Mnementh. F'lar wisely agrees.
Well done, F'lar and Lessa.
So this was another shorter section, light on action, but with a nice little look at how F'lar and Lessa's leadership is making changes to the Weyr at large. It's cleverly done actually: Ms. McCaffrey doesn't waste time on boring details like changes to patrol or resource management. Instead, we look at one specific area that is much more fun: the hatching.
And since we saw how a hatching was run under R'gul's leadership, we can compare and contrast for ourselves. F'lar and Lessa's changes are a rousing success, and I'm willing to take Ms. McCaffrey's word that the other, more boring, changes are equally as successful. It's a nice example of how to do "show, not tell" without shoving too many extraneous details into the reader's gullet.
Lessa seems a lot more content now. She still has some understandable resentment of the baby, Jaxom, who will be soon ruling her Hold, but she's now got the co-leadership role that she was promised. This section and the last one show us that while F'lar may be the one with the grand schemes, Lessa is still an equal part of the process, supporting or challenging him as she feels appropriate.
She also seems to have come to terms with her relationship with F'lar. At the very least, she cares enough to be a little bit possessive. I still don't like this relationship or how it began, and I still wish Ms. McCaffrey had chosen any other way to write it. But I am glad that she doesn't seem unhappy.
Lytol is still the most useful character in this goddamn book.