Book Review

Dragon Singer, Anne McCaffrey
A lot of this will sound like complaining so I'll say first thing that I really liked it a lot and fully plan on getting Dragon Drums to round out the trilogy. Dragon Singer follows Menolly as she is transferred to Harper Hall at the behest of the Master Harper. This Harper Hall Trilogy is a vignette within the world created by the first three books which introduced the dragon riders of Pern and the threat facing the planet. I knew that going into it, but I guess in order to get a more "action" based story I'll have to go back to the original Pern trilogy (which I haven't read yet.) I mean, this story is very absorbing and as a former teenage girl, I understand the angst as well as anyone. But it lacks the discovery and external challenges of Dragon Song and it's a typical "middle of the series" offering - necessary to the overall picture, but not a lot gets accomplished within. I was hoping the big picture had more to do with the threat of the Thread and that perhaps Menolly and the fire lizards would have more of a part in that. It's certainly hinted at that the fire lizards could be important in Dragon Song, and there's a brief brush with the bigger story concerning the Red Star and a couple of other dragon riders in Dragon Singer. But at this point the lizards are just wonderful pets that seem to have no other purpose than to help modernize the Pern society. The height of this particular book is Menolly coming to grips with the fact that she's now allowed to nurture her gift of music freely. And it's a little on the simplistic side - I think it should've taken longer than a week to arrive at the results that came at the end of this book because there was a lot of material there to make it just a little more complex. But perhaps Dragon Drums will make sense out of the fast pace that Menolly's character is developing at. And I haven't forgotten that the entire series consists of around 14 books, so this may be adding more layers of complexity to the story than I realize.
I love seeing books that have influenced later authors. You can see the influence of the Pern series in the Inheritance series and Harry Potter. I'm really loving all of this Pern stuff so far.