Product Description

For millions of readers the world over, the name Pern is magical, conjuring up grand vistas of a distant planet whose blue skies are patrolled by brave dragons and their noble riders, a paradise threatened by the periodic fall of deadly Thread. But not all dangers descend from the skies. Now, in their third collaboration, Anne McCaffrey and her son, Todd McCaffrey, spin a tale of a mysterious illness that may succeed in doing what centuries of Threadfall could not: kill every last human on Pern.

Life in the Harper Hall is busy for best friends Kindan, Nonala, and Kelsa. As the only female apprentices, Nonala and Kelsa are the butt of jokes and easy targets for the bully Vaxoram and his cronies. But when Kindan springs to Kelsa’s defense, he winds up in a fight for his life against the older, bigger Vaxoram–a fight that will lead to a surprising friendship.

Meanwhile, in nearby Fort Hold, a clutch of fire-lizard eggs is about to hatch, and Lord Bemin’s beautiful young daughter, Koriana, is determined to Impress one of the delightful creatures. At the hatching, Kindan Impresses a fire-lizard of his own . . . and wins the heart of Koriana. But Lord Bemin mistrusts harpers and will not hear of a match between his daughter and the low-born Kindan.

Then fate intervenes in the form of a virulent plague as fast-spreading as it is deadly. Arising suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the contagion decimates hold after hold, paying no heed to distinctions of birth. In this feverish crucible, friendship and love will be tested to the breaking point and beyond. For with Threadfall scant years away, the Dragonriders dare not expose themselves to infection, and it will fall to Kindan and his fellow apprentices to bravely search for a cure and save humanity.

The price of failure is unthinkable. But the price of success may be even harder to bear.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #374835 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-26
• Released on: 2007-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As a terrible plague sweeps Pern, a brave Harper apprentice emerges as a true hero in this satisfying third collaboration between McCaffrey mère and fils (after 2006's Dragon's Fire). The danger this time is not the deadly Thread but a virulent disease, similar to our world's 1918 influenza epidemic or the more recent outbreaks of SARS. Kindan, a young apprentice of the Harpers' Guild who's dedicated to music, education and healing, had hoped to become a dragonrider, but failed to bond with a dragon at the last hatching. Then his education and budding romance with a lord's daughter are disrupted by the epidemic, which poses a particular threat to the dragons and dragonriders who will be needed to fight the approaching Thread. The McCaffreys depict the crisis vividly, with enough detail to make the tragedy all too real and with enough hope to keep fantasy fans happy. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In this sequel to Dragon’s Fire (2006), young Kindan is now a Harper Hall apprentice and proud owner of a fire lizard. Hall, Hold, and Weyr (three sections of Pernese society) are threatened by a deadly plague, and Kindan and his fellow apprentices are racing to find the cure before the Third Pass begins. In a smooth, clear reading that is somewhat lacking in intensity, Ericksen does not create distinct voices for each character. Series fans, however, will undoubtedly have no trouble identifying the principal players. Featuring a large cast of adolescent characters, this coming-of-age tale is suggested where earlier Pern titles by the McCaffreys (mother and son) are popular. --Jessica Moyer

Review
Praise for Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey

Dragon’s Fire

“The McCaffreys’ second fire-breathing collaboration . . . proves why these fabled dragons still cast a spell.”
–Publishers Weekly

“Grittier than the early parts of the series; Todd’s apparently brought a wider, more current worldview to Pern.”
–The San Diego Union-Tribune

Dragon’s Kin

“Superb storytelling . . . essential for Pern fans of all ages.”
–Library Journal (starred review)

“A guaranteed pleaser [in] one of SF’s most splendid and longest-lived sagas.”
–Booklist



From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Picks up in latter third but tough going until then
To be honest, I don't expect much when I pick up a Pern book anymore. These last few have ranged from middling at best (Dragonsblood) to nearly unreadable (Dragon's Fire). While the eternal optimist in me keeps me reading the series, the realist in me can't help but note just how long it's been since there's been a good book (I'm not asking for the glory of the great ones). Sadly, Dragon Harper doesn't break that streak. It's not as bad as Dragon's Fire, though that isn't saying much at all, and it's not quite as good as Dragonsblood, which also isn't saying much since that novel was mostly just adequate.
Time-wise, the book picks up just after the events of Dragon's Kin and Dragon's Fire. Harper apprentice Kindan is having a tough time at Harper Hall--he can't find something he's good at and he and his friends (Verilan and two girls--Nonala and Kelsa) are tormented by the requisite school bully Vaxoram. Kindan eventually challenges Vaxoram to a duel and Vaxoram becomes his servant and then friend. Soon after Kindan impresses a fire-lizard and at the hatching meets and falls in love with Koriana, daughter of Lord Holder Bemin of Fort Hold (who has Harper "issues" and is no way going to allow his daughter to hook up with one). Then we get the by-now-too familiar plague sweeping across Pern, killing nearly everyone. Kindan and his young friends frantically search the records to find a cure and then gradually take on even more duties as the adults begin to falter before the plague's onslaught.
Where does one start when detailing all the problems with the book? How about plot? The biggest problem has already been mentioned--we've seen it all before. The plague. The search through records. The sense of urgency. The exhausted survivors trying to save the others. The young apprentice constantly being bullied and having to stand up for himself. Dragons going between. Fire Lizards being impressed. If one can't have originality, then one can hope for the comfort of familiarity. But there's a fine line between familiar and stale and Harper crosses that line. Add in the sketchiness of much of the plotting (almost no sense of what is happening elsewhere, who else is combatting this plague and how) and some implausibility tossed in as well, and the book just can't rely on plot to save it.
The same sense of staleness resides in the characters who are at times overly familiar (Kindan has echoes of Piemur) but have none of the spirit or freshness of the characters they are pale shadows of. Some are mere caricatures--the bully and the redeemed bully. And, hearkening back to the major flaws of Dragon's Blood, too many lack a consistent core. A character gloats over another then less than a page or two later speaks with pride of the same person he was just gloating over. Characters switch moods on utter whims, with no sense of reason. Vaxoram's switch from bully to devoted servant is simply unbelievable, with not even a facade of complexity tossed in. Characters learn to fight with their complete opposite hand in under a week. Try dribbling a basketball with a week's practice in your off hand. Now imagine fencing with it. There's suspension of disbelief and then there's not even bothering to pretend it's believable. A character gets the smart idea of surgical masks to help contain the killer flu, but then simply waits around for full-fledged masks to be delivered rather than jury-rig something out of all the material at hand (such as the sheets flapping around outside since the laundress is dead). And the list goes on.
There are other issues as well--flat side-characters, clumsy introduction of feminist issues (it's not the raising of the issue, it's the painfully clunky way it is done), the reliance on "timing" once again to solve a problem (with all its attendant questions/paradoxes, an unnecessary prolog that plays at being coy but is self-evident to any Pern fan and that adds nothing to the plot,
Is there anything good? Actually, yes. While way too familiar, the plague plotline, once it starts going and focuses solely on Kindan's role as healer, is by far the strongest part of the book. The action is tight, focused, well-paced. Characters start to flesh out a bit and one starts to actually care about some of them. It's a sizeable chunk of the book, about a third, and since it comes in the end it means the book leaves a relatively positive taste in your mouth once you finish it, no mean accomplishment after how bad the first two-thirds of the book were.
But a third of a book is still just a third of a book. The fact that it comes at the end means the memory of the book is more positive than it has any right to be, but it still doesn't make it a good book. So I can't recommend this book. Though I fear most Pern fans will read it anyway, hoping against hope and experience--just be forewarned. Anyone who hasn't read the Pern books yet will obviously start with the first ones so it will be long period of enjoyment before they get to the lower quality of the latter books. I envy them their journey and would recommend that current Pern fans can better spend their time retracing their steps in the series rather than continuing forward.
I'll let you know how the next one turns out--though I fear we all already know.

Another Pernese Plague
OK, I accept that Anne McCaffrey has passed the Pern torch to her son, Todd. I even accept that Todd is passable as an author, though he lacks his mother's genious. But how many plagues will Pern suffer? Can't he come up with another plotline? There are fewer than two dozen characters in the storyline, and most of these flit into scenes without any development. His characters are inconsistent and the situation unbelievable. In a sudden, catastrophic plague, the Masterharper of Pern sets his most junior apprentices to searching the Archives for a cure. Not Healers. Not even Masters. Or Journeymen. And the basis for the search? Look for information about the last Plague. No symptoms of illness, no original source, no planet-wide gathering of Lords, Masters and Weyrleaders - almost all critical decisions are made by a pubescent Apprentice Harper! This premise is well outside bounds set previously in the series, and so absurd that "suspension of disbelief" is impossible. This is a cute enough story that should be in Youth Fiction, but not creditable or deep enough for anyone over the age of twelve to waste any time on this pathetic attempt to continue the Pern saga.

Enjoyable
Given that Anne and Todd McCaffrey's "Dragon Harper" is the sequel to "Dragon's Kin" and "Dragon's Fire", it seemed like a good idea to reread those books first, before plunging into "Harper". That way, I could get reacquainted with the characters of Pern's late Second Interval, barely a dozen Turns before Thread is due to fall again. After about six hours, I'm done with the new book.

How was it? First, a brief sketch of the plot. The story starts with a cryptic prologue in which a wing of Ista dragonriders have obviously been "timing it", having gone missing for a sevenday, but no one will say why to the obvious anger and frustration of their Wing Leader.

Chapter One starts off exactly where Chapter Eleven of "Dragon's Fire" left off - with former miner Cristov arriving at High Reaches Weyr and Impressing bronze Sereth. Harper apprentice Kindan is also present, but fails to Impress. Thus he returns to the Harper Hall.

Kindan, the main protagonist of the story, does not have it easy. First, he has to find a way of dealing with senior apprentice Vaxoram, who is bullying Kindan's friends relentlessly, until he can't stand it anymore. At this point in Pern's history, two millennia before F'lar and Lessa, swords are still the preferred weapon for dueling, rather than belt knives. After the duel, Kindan has to learn how to deal graciously with a vanquished opponent. Will they be able to settle their differences? Or will bad feelings fester?

Then there's the little problem with Koriana, the daughter of the Lord of nearby Fort Hold. Kindan and Koriana meet when they each Impress firelizards, and there's instant attraction. Unfortunately, by now Pern has definitely developed a male-dominated feudal society, and Koriana's parents have other ideas than letting her run off with a lowly harper apprentice, and a commoner at that.

To compound Kindan's misery, he's going through his growth spurt and has turned into a world-class klutz.

A much bigger problem, affecting the entire planet, is an acute shortage of apprentice harpers and healers. With Thread due to start falling in just a few more Turns, most of the Holds and Crafts are hoarding their people, in one final burst of activity to finish widening out holds and laying up foodstuffs before they have to hunker down and weather the fifty-Turn siege of Thread. Practically no one wants their kids to volunteer to be a harper or a healer, especially not a healer -- it takes too long to get trained. Harpers, given their need to travel all over Pern, are given some basic training in leechcraft, but the situation is slowly getting worse.

Because all of the dwindling number of masters and journeymen are already feeling overloaded, they rely too much on apprentices to search the archives when urgent research is needed. Of course, the Harper Hall's Archive Room is a huge, dimly-lit cavern. Young eyes tend to be best at looking at all that tiny printing by glowlight. Also, Kindan has proven very adept at digging up helpful lore, such as the solution to that exploding firestone problem in the previous book.

Thus, when a few small, outlying cotholds near Benden Hold start to fall silent and ominous rumblings of a "super-flu" start leaking out, the Master Harpers and Healers don't react with enough urgency at first. Will they "get with the program" soon enough to prevent tens of thousands of deaths?

It doesn't help that, as supplies start to get scant, Kindan has to rely on a torch to go through the records. And, remember that bit about him being a klutz ...?

Meanwhile, where are the dragons and their riders?

As a side note: There are a few interesting little tidbits in the story, such as a possible explanation for why dragons and firelizards hum at a Hatching.

Essentially, I enjoyed the story, and liked the characters. It's definitely light reading, but a pleasant way to while away the afternoon.

That's not to say that the book is flawless. It does seem like the plague idea has been worked enough. It's time for some fresh material. Will Todd be creative enough to pull it off next time around? No one can replace Anne's skill in writing her earlier Pern works -- not even Anne herself, who is now past 80. There's a reason why she's handing off to her son.

On a more technical note, I find the "Dramatis Personae" at the front of the book way too sketchy, with only a couple of dozen names. It's a shame they couldn't come up with a full "Dragondex" in the back like the earliest Pern novels had.

So, should you rush right out and read this book? Seriously, judging by the tone of some of the other reviews already written, and the way "Dragon's Fire" has been received, I'll reserve judgement. For myself, I'm glad I didn't wait. But, it's totally up to you.