Dragonflight

This is the first Pern book on the list provided by the library.

The main character of Dragonflight is Lessa, a clever girl who is able to speak to all dragons. When the story begins, Lessa is working undercover as a kitchen drudge in her family’s hold. The hold was seized by an ambitious overlord, and she is biding her time before she can take back the hold. This part was a bit difficult for me to be interested in, because it spends a lot of time talking from her bitter and dissatisfied point of view. It is necessary back story, though.

The dragonriders are in disfavor because thread, the destructive silver rain that dragons burn up as it falls, hasn’t fallen in hundreds of years. The citizens of Pern don’t believe it will ever fall again, and they are questioning their support of dragonriders.

The last remaining (and lazy) queen lays a golden queen egg, and the search for a suitable female dragonrider uncovers Lessa. When Lessa is brought to the Weyr and impresses her queen dragon, the story is finally in full swing. The emotional attachment between dragon and rider is a touching component of these scenes.

Of course, the thread begins to fall again, and the small number of dragons are woefully unprepared to fight it effectively. It is at this time that Lessa discovers that dragons can fly through time as well as space, and she mounts a very risky and experimental mission to bring oldtimer dragons and dragonriders to the present time to help fight thread.

By the time I was a quarter of the way into this book, I had a hard time putting it down. There is wonderful tension and excitement in this book.