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'Dragon Harper' explores another aspect of early Pern history, again through the eyes of Kindan, the apprentice harper. The 'Dragon' in the title is a bit of a misnomer as Kindan doesn't link with an egg at a hatching although he impresses a bronze fire-lizard later. The book divides into Kindan's troubles with some bullying apprentices to a fatal flu epidemic which sweeps through the population. Saying too much about either event is going to act as spoilers so you'll have to forgive me if I write in more general terms.
Something I wrote in previous recent Pern reviews focused on how little reflected empathy Todd McCaffrey has when writing stories. Without seeing just how much his mother, Anne, does tends to leave it open to speculation here. Then again, Anne McCaffrey's impact on her own series alone shows how much emotional input she embeds with the characters. Now whether it is the smaller page count or not, the one thing sadly missing is the lack of feeling when it comes to characters who die during the epidemic. There was a lot of time used to show off a lot of these characters but little left to show the impact on those left after their passing. If you compared this to a similar situation in Connie Willis' 'The Doomsday Book', you would know the difference. If this problem is down to Todd then he still has a lot to learn in his storycraft and still only a journeyman (sic).
In terms of Pern history, these flu epidemics, of which this is the second, appears to be the most major and explains how primitive things got in the future we're all acquainted with, especially with the loss of records and adequate craftmasters.
As to the future of Pern stories. It looks seriously like nothing is going to be written about current day Pern now. Whether this is to get Todd better grounded in writing or not I'm not quite sure. Certainly his involvement in writing about the weyr-folk themselves hasn't come about yet. A lot of the known SF elements of Pern aren't difficult to anticipate here as to the solutions they bring. It's sort of playing with a loaded deck as long as you know the hidden hand.
This doesn't mean this book isn't an interesting read and will keep Pern fans happy that their reality is still coming out in books. If I was going to look for direction for the next book, I would think a series of short stories where the McCaffreys work together and alone might give some stronger insights as to their strengths and weaknesses. At some point, Todd is going to have to learn to write well alone and this might be the best step to help him.
GF Willmetts |
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