Anne McCaffrey ~ The Dragonriders Of Pern (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon)
From: Del Rey

It’s a proven fact that a single anal sex experience causes one to be homosexual. The hormones released by a sexual situation involving the anus being broached, are the same hormones found in large quantities in effeminate homosexual males. For example, when I was much younger I knew a young man who has for all intents and purposes, heterosexual. He was mugged, and involved in a rape situation involving a tent peg. This one event was enough to have him start on a road that eventually led to him becoming effeminate and gay. – Anne McCaffrey

I was scoping out Fictionwise the other day and spotted this collection in the Sci-fi section and just had to post this review again. For those of you who missed it the first time this is one of my first reviews way back when. Now updated for the eBook version you can read in a much more comfortable font size.

I am not a Fan Boy, never have been, and so I find it is difficult at times to review a book or a series that I have loved from my childhood, not because I won’t try to tell you what attracted me to them originally, but mostly because I find myself extremely bias if not out right critical of what the author eventually said or did or wrote that added or such as in this case seriously detracted from my personal enjoyment of the series after I got older. Ursula K. Le Guin and her Earthsea, Marion Zimmer Bradley and her groundbreaking Darkover, and last but not least Andre Norton and her Witch World come to mind often (Not that Anne McCaffrey is truly in their league mind you.) in this regard because these are all classic, voluminous, Science Fiction/Fantasy series with touches of Romance. I am torn though because, like it or not, I always will be picky and not every god damned book in a series is actually worth reading even if I love it.

Here in The Dragonriders of Pern I have found unfortunately a prime example of a writer that should have quit while she was ahead and simply said nothing and not tried to act like she had some brilliant, well reasoned, and scientifically researched plan to begin with long ago. In my opinion most of Anne’s work rides just this side of Romance with space ships and sex despite her continued denial of being a Romance writer who dabbles in Sci-fi. Yeah, and I am really straight Anne and have just not met the right woman yet.

The Dragonriders of Pern is a nicely packaged compendium of the first three novels of the well known, much loved Dragonrider series, Dragonflight published in 1968, Dragonquest published in 1971, and finally The White Dragon published in 1978. If you only read these first three books, and maybe (I don’t know.), throw in the three Young Adult books that form the Harper Hall Trilogy Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums, you might find an exciting if flawed Science Fiction/Fantasy world with dark yet strong willed adult characters bent on survival and some added Erotic Romance touches (Rough Sex, Homosexuality and Rape) explored in the subtext. In this regard this particular book is an excellent purchase, giving you most of the juicy Pern goodness you would ever want to read in one easily obtainable lump.

I have to caution you before starting in on a review of these first three novels that I have over the years spent considerable amounts of time and money buying and reading the 15 or more now books that compromise the rest of this misguided series and so I must try (Try!… Try as hard as I can!) to ignore the horrifying and wretched disappointments I have been dealt after oh about the seventh book (Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern published in 1983) one of my absolute favorites in the series and also the very last of the “core books” or should I say the last of the “consistent & logical stories that retained some type of series continuity” in my opinion.

The rest just hit me as watching what I assumed to be capable writer (Through bad plotting, bad characterization, bad continuity, Mary Sue-isms, and maybe… apathy?) trash her best known and most beloved series. So if I get maybe a tad caustic, and a smidgen unfair, be forewarned. I obviously love, and continue to love, after all this time, the first seven books of this series. Shit, I own them all and read them often enough. I simply refuse to mislead you into thinking they do not have some very very serious flaws.

Dragonflight
The first book of Pern-lishiousness Eva! Here we meet the sleek and sensuous, oops! I mean, orphaned, rag covered and dirty-smelly Lessa plotting and plying her vengeful way to the tippy-top of Ruatha Hold. She is willing to do, say, or kill whomever it takes to get back her rightful property from the evil Big Daddy Fax, I mean Lord Fax. Lessa is originally portrayed here as anything but a dumb blond, she admits to killing or “removing” at least eight guys whom Fax has sent over the years to run Ruatha Hold. Then those pesky Dragonriders show up one day looking for some of that old blood, super human, Ruatha womanhood to provide a right and proper candidate for the freshly laid Gold dragon egg back at Benden Weyr. So after years and years of finagling and plotting and finally getting rid of, once and for all, that nasty evil vicious Big Daddy Fax, poor Lessa’s big chance in local politics gets cut short and she gets immediately whisked off to be the next Weyrwoman of Benden Weyr.

If all this seems a little too quick and comes across slightly disjointed just wait till you check out this first book, we’re talking slap dash action all the way and its quite clear chapter one here of the story was written at a much earlier, less thought out time, and then simply slapped with no rewrite right into the rest of the book. Editing and continuity is one of Anne McCaffrey’s major fucking issues, I do not think she believes in it or something.

Dragonflight proceeds on with an introduction of Lessa learning about those wild and wicked Dragonrider ways of life at the Weyr. So let’s talk about the sex baby…

Dragons and their riders are the only fighting force that can save Pern from the deadly Thread (evil parasites) that falls from a star that rotates by every so many turns (years). It’s been hundreds of years since the last time this happened and the Holds are questioning if the Weyrs are really all that useful anymore. They want a tax audit! Plucky Bronze Dragonrider F’lar KNOWS, he just KNOWS, that the Thread will be coming SOON (Because he is old school and down with the knowledge of the ancients.) and Benden Weyr on it’s own (As in… That’s all the dragons and riders they got.) is not prepared for the coming planet wide catastrophe.

Lessa our now cleaned up, sleek sensuous heroine (That’s better.) gets thrown into a ceremony to Impress the mighty Gold dragon Ramoth at the hatching. The riders of the dragons we learn are psychically, telepathically, emotionally and I guess financially bound (Impressed) to their dragons for life much like a yuppie and a BMW with a Starbucks cup holder and built in Bluetooth package.

You then find out that there are Green, Blue, Brown, Bronze and Gold dragons (But no Purple ones! Oh lordy not that!), Gold dragons being biggest female queens of the bunch, it’s on them to lay all the eggs for more dragons, and they in turn are basically loved and cherished by all of dragon kind. Not to mention they are bonded to the only “real women” who ride dragons. Like our Lessa.

OK, I’ll do my Anne impersonation here, stomp my feet and demand repeatedly DAMN YOU SLASH FIC WRITERS! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!, Only women are ever allowed to ride the precious and fertile female Gold dragons, nasty smelly manly men ride the rest, well almost, but we will talk of those Green riders later. Bronze dragons are second in size to Gold dragons and the only male dragons allowed to mate with the picky Gold girly-girl dragons. Only one Bronze dragon and rider can logistically mate with the queen at any given mating flight, and that Bronze dude (In Lessa’s case the studly, heterosexual, Bronze rider, and man about town, F’lar.) is the Weyrleader till the next mating flight where the contest for Weyrleader and a chance to get some raunchy rough passionate hetro-sex with a real live female rider begins anew.

Well, at least in theory, maybe sometime I’ll go over how Anne relies on constant contrivances in this series to pad the BIG MONOGAMOUS ROMANCE that eventually undercuts the functional logic of the Sci-fi world she created here. If you are going to build in a chance of failure to add tension why not leverage that tension? Instead she sticks strictly to the Romance paradigm of the HEA so why not have them mate for life like werewolves then?

Everyone else (Including the rest of the heterosexual manly men, Bronze and Brown riders) have to make do with a quickie from the infertile small Green dragons and their prancing male riders otherwise noted as “those prissy bitches”.

I have not gone into the whole “Must Save Pern” story presented in Dragonflight, because well the whole story is not half as interesting as the sex, and let’s face it the saving grace of Dragonflight is our heroine Lessa and her no holds barred fighting female character. Here is a smart strong willed woman striving to survive in a world where women are thought of as no more than trophies for the enjoyment of the men who rule. The Alpha males abound on this planet looking for blond bimbos daily.

Lessa’s relationship with F’lar surprisingly evolves as an equal in cunning and manipulation. They both come to realize that they need each other in order to succeed in their individual goals of saving Pern and earning the respect of those around them. Not to mention F’lar finds out that Lessa is gifted with the unique ability to talk to any dragon she wants and has the useful if limited ability to control men’s minds and then there’s that having sex with the Weyrwoman keeps you in the Weyrleader position deal. Gotta love those job benefits!

Right here is where I have the problem of knowing what the future holds for Lessa and let me be very honest in saying that by the end of this book she is happily married to F’lar and so from now on Anne McCaffrey will simply ignore and marginalize her making F’lar the more important and heroic manly hetro man of the pair. We will never see Lessa act independently again.

Dragonquest
The second book in our Pern-astic tales presents us with F’nor a Brown rider and F’lars second in command (Riding the biggest Brown dragon Eva! Thank you Anne. This is after Ramoth is the biggest Gold dragon Eva! and Mnementh is the biggest Bronze dragon Eva! etc etc etc) and Brekke a new Gold rider (With the biggest Sexual Hangup Eva!) and this book I guess is about their blossoming Romance (But Anne does not write Romances… Get it!) and subsequent tragic events.

Oh yes, and let’s not forget the Oldtimers still hanging around, otherwise known as the “Deus Ex Machina” from the last book, which Lessa valiantly brings with her from the past to help Benden Weyr repopulate and fight the onslaught of deadly falling Thread the Dragonriders now face.

Any-who the Oldtimers and their newly reconstituted Weyrs expect a little more lovin from the Holds they protect and thus cause more political turmoil, and a whole lotta whining and gnashing of collective teeth, while Pern faces certain death *again* from the Thread that decided suddenly to show up on a different time table.

Then we have that problem with EVIL NASTY Kylara.

Why is Kylara EVIL and NASTY? Maybe because she decided to have an abortion, not that these women have access to “the pill” or “family planning” or anything like that and not because she did not already have two kids from before becoming a Gold rider and not that any of the Dragonriders are great parents to begin with. She just decided to be responsible and figured out a way to do something about it. Oh, boo hiss! OR MAYBE because she admits she enjoys rough raw nasty dragon sex and plots to see if she can lure F’lar away from Lessa by accidentally having him around when her dragon rises to mate thus trapping him in her evil scheme for at least a night of fun F’lar lovin. OR MAYBE because she like the rest of the men on this planet that are all plotting and scheming with their friendly neighborhood Lord Holders to position themselves and consolidate power.

Who knows, anyway she is EVIL and NASTY! Anne McCaffrey wrote her like that.

In my opinion Kylara comes across as the strongest and most solidly interesting character in this second book and frankly she seems to me to be someone who definitely could give the original Lessa a run for her money. BUT OH NO, she has a sudden and nasty head on collision that involves her Gold dragon and Brekke’s Gold dragon killing each other during a unplanned for mating flight of two Gold dragons rising in the same close vicinity and all the dragon men blame evil nasty Kylara for being slack in her duties and…

RANT MODE ON: WTF? Mating flights are shown in both these books so far as being pretty much unplanned affairs and fully out of the control of the rider down to the point that the Gold and Bronze riders can all be caught unaware and involved. Remember that is the necessary ingredient of Kylara’s scheme for F’lar? If the Dragonriders knew enough to blame Kylara for not taking some type of precautions or responsibilities here, then where were they to advise both women to get their precious Gold dragons butts away from each other? Tsk tsk tsk.

Anyway, the evil Kylara is gone much to my surprise and the rest of the book has F’nor doing something heroic to save Pern and Brekke tragically coming to terms with the loss of her Gold dragon. Whaaaaa! Boo-friggin-hoo Brekke, snap out of it already!

Can you tell I do not like to be shown codependent sniveling TSTL heroines when there are perfectly good, strong, capable, female villains I would much rather read about?

The White Dragon
Oh yes Pern-acious ones! Here is the third and last of the core Dragonrider tales. Introducing Jaxom Lord Holder of Ruatha Hold and his dragon Ruth. (The Biggest White dragon Eva! Well ok, the ONLY White dragon Eva! Anne you shouldn’t have.) So Lord Jaxom I will kindly label the immature brat you are as the “Wesley Crusher of Pern”. Oh yeah baby! This guy just makes me roll my eyes at every turn I tell ya.

Now Lessa, poor girl, had to give up her dream of being Lord Holder of Ruatha Hold due to impressing her Gold dragon Ramoth and becoming Weyrwoman of Benden Weyr but not our boy Wesley, I mean Jaxom. Nope he gets to keep the White dragon and play Lord Holder of Ruatha Hold too. Not to mention a few other things that will come about later in the series.

Jaxom has more cake and eats it too than anyone else in the entire Dragonrider series. Unfortunately unlike the other Wesley Crusher he never suddenly disappears leaving us with a warm and fuzzy feeling which would have made him more palatable in my mind.

That aint all she wrote in this here book. Anne McCaffrey in this family friendly volume finally addresses the underlying homosexuality of the Dragonriders by seeing it in all it’s sick and twisted perversion through the eyes of our little straight boy Jaxom and boy oh boy what a mess that is.

About halfway through the book Jaxom catches the mating rise of some dragons and after observing a Green dragon rider and his fellows gettin it on, and might I point out turning on Wesley, I mean Jaxom in the process, he immediately runs off to see his little girlfriend Corana and proceeds to RAPE her. Yep, I spelled it in uppercase there so you would catch that. Now there’s some wholesome 80s family entertainment I tell you!

I am not making this up folks. We have so far allowed for the fact that Lessa and F’lar had a rough and tumble, almost BDSM like, mating flight of a Bronze and Gold dragon going on in book one, and we have even lived through F’nor doing the nasty with Brekke when he barely knew her name. Now in hindsight, it is also apparent to me that Anne McCaffrey meant to show these tender Hallmark moments as passionate, unfortunately VIOLENT seems a better word to describe how these various scenes actually come across.

Yes my friends, right here in this handy dandy third book you get a main character RAPING his girlfriend forcibly and then to top off the whole thing he proceeds to chat about it with his dragon getting all guilty and deciding to never, ever, ever, see Corana again, ever! Because she… she… she… let him do it! She liked it? Oh man! Bummer dude! It’s like reading the life and trials of a drunken frat boy.

Anyway Jaxom goes on to do something even more heroic to save all Pern but by this point I start getting nauseous and stop reading.

In Summary
Homosexual relations do not take place openly in these writings and not by any of the main characters because obviously homosexuals and most females have no power on Pern, they hold no high ranking, decision making, offices. Homosexuality is simply presented as “the way things are” because of the way the Dragonriders respond to the sexual needs of their dragons. Brown riders and Bronze riders are continually presented as “fully male” and Gold riders are “fully female” (and the rest… well you get the picture, they get snickered at for being something LESS.) Even when it is apparent from the number of Bronze and Brown riders not paired with the precious few Gold riders that they must be using the services of a Green dragon and her MALE rider (Especially since F’lar has the love of the biggest Gold dragon Eva! locked up tight there buddy).

Anne McCaffrey has obviously meant to present these “fully male”, Browns and Bronze, as finding any Green pairing distasteful (Like Marines after the fifth beer, just don’t kiss me!). Bisexuals or Lesbians apparently don’t exist on Pern (At least in these “core books”.) When it is logical if you have one, then the rest should also be visible. Right?

So much for a fine example of forward thinking Fantasy/Sci-fi as Anne McCaffrey tends to want to present it all, because in my estimate at least, it falls way way short of that. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s early Fantasy/Sci-fi work has no insulting or condescending undertone and does a much better job of handling homosexuality without the use of apparent stereotypes.

But in the end what honestly bothers me most is not the way homosexuals or women get portrayed in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonrider series, not at all. I think there are some good stories to be read here and I do find it interesting and I have spent many years rereading the series over and over again. I really enjoy the dark and imperfect characters even when it drips with sexism and so on, much like watching some old anachronistic James Bond flick.

Nope, what really bothers me is when Anne McCaffrey and her publisher changes the old tune about The Harper Hall trilogy being specifically written for Children and the rest of the series for Adults and starts promoting the whole damn series as somehow being Child Safe and harmless.

WHAT THE HELL IS SHE THINKING?!?

Please do me a favor and read these books for yourself before handing them to young kids. Because that just aint right.

Grade B overall.