Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18534 in Books
• Published on: 1983-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 254 pages

From the Publisher
The first chronicle of Pern.

From the Back Cover
The men who rode the dragons were a breed apart. Chosen when the dragons were first hatched, they became soulmates for life with the huge, magnificent beasts they controlled - the green, blue, brown and bronzes - beautiful - terrible - the only creatures who could defend the planet Pern from the blood-red star. But without the Queen, the dragons would become extinct. Only the gigantic, golden Queen could breed the new flights. And the Queen was fading...dying...leaving behind one last, huge, golden egg.

DRAGONFLIGHT is the first book in Anne McCaffrey's world-famous Chronicles of Pern.

About the Author
Anne McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, majoring in Slavonic Languages and Literatures. A prolific bestselling author, she is best known for her handling of broad themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly in her tales of the Talents and the novels about the Dragonriders of Pern. Anne McCaffrey lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in County Wicklow, Ireland.

Customer Reviews

The first of many
I read this for the first time about the time it came out. Having read it again for about the 7th time, I must say that it is as good as it always was.

It is written in 3 or more novella form, and each episode is self contained, but follows on from the one before. Anne McCaffrey set the scene and planted the characters for the whole series, but without this firm beginning, the strong characterisations would not have worked so well in the later books. F'lar and Lessa particularly are bound together in a project that will last the rest of their lives, and they are aided by the Craftmasters. The Lawyer, PR man musician Robinton, the engineer Fandarel and of course, the ex-dragonrider, weaver Lytol who takes charge of the baby lord of the great estate of Ruatha, fallen into disrepair and unproductiveness. F'lar's loyal brother is a useful sidekick, but it is the dragons that tend to star.
One can tire of the matching of dragons to riders, but in this book it is fresh and moving.

It works on many levels and is worth reading.

Dragonbore
Although the book was ok, it was definitley very boring in parts.

I found myself wanting it to be over at times, yet enjoying other parts, just waiting for the book to jump into great waters, which sadly, it did not.

The book was overall an ok read. It hinted at greatness, yet did not deliver.

It's worth reading if you're into this sort of thing, which i am.

But otherwise i would recommend you buy something else.

What a waste of time.
I have a habit of finding good points about anything I read. Still, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find anything positive about this book.

The characters are one-dimensional and wholly unconvincing. There's not a single character in that book that can be liked, they've all got their heads too far up their behinds and show no other personality traits besides complete and utter cockiness. Everything that anyone said to them was a potential insult. Even the dragons are an unlikable, arrogant bunch. There are also too many characters with similar names! F'lax F'lon Fax - how is the poor reader supposed to make them out in the first ten pages, especially when they all behave the same?

The plot is predictable, which in itself doesn't have to be a bad thing, but in this case it just bores.

Anne McCaffrey also an annoying habit that is the bane of fantasy and sci-fi: she came up with a whole truckload of original names, species, objects etc. and she doesn't actually explain what the hell those things are for about 200 pages or, in most cases, fails to explain them at all. This is supposed to make the narration feel natural, but is difficult to pull off and in most cases leaves the reader muddling around a world that he/she doesn't understand, which does nothing but breed frustration. For example, it took me about 200 pages to understand what the hell travelling "between" was. And that was only because I read it in a review on Amazon.

Overall, don't waste your time. If you enjoy such novels, I'd highly recommend you go for something by Sharon Shinn, who manages to create likable and understandable characters in a well-explained world despite being all too obviously influenced by Ms McCaffrey.