DragonFlight -- Final Thoughts (Part 1)

Dande:
So I think we should go around and have final thoughts.

Newhope:
In general, the book was okay. It had a shaky start, but it had great plot twists, in my opinion. I really liked where it went with the whole book, where it started out being with the one plot, and it switched completely, and it ended up being a book where I actually enjoyed it. I actually wanted to find out what happened at the end. It left it off to a sequel, and I know how many books there are that have been written for it, and I enjoyed the ending.

Jolly:
I read ten pages, and I was confused.

[laughs]

Jolly:
I have no idea what you guys have been saying this entire time.

Lasagna:
Me too.

Chair:
I didn't read any of it.

Smiley:
Well, I—I don't know. Like I said, I read it really fast, and I haven't read the end yet, so I don't know if it's going to be really good at the end, but I agree with Newhope: the beginning was really not inviting to read the entire novel, and the middle was kind of boring.

[laughs]

Smiley:
But maybe if I read the end, and maybe if I read it slower and at my own pace, I will like it. But I did like the plot, and I did like the whole between times thing, even though I didn't get the between thing until later on. It was a good book.

Wvskier:
I obviously love the series. I actually find her writing style very similar to J. R. R. Tolkien's. Basically it sort of draws out, not the boring stuff, but the stuff you wouldn't really read about, not the action.

Newhope:
Like J. R. R. Tolkien's description of the darkness of a cave that goes on for pages . . .

Wvskier:
It basically shows the minor things in the book, and I find that pretty interesting, because basically you don't normally read about every single little detail. And that's what I like about her, basically.

DragonFlight -- The Rest of the Series (Part 1)

Dande:
I encourage anyone who liked this book to go read the rest of the series, because they just get better from here.

Wvskier:
Definitely. Dragonflight is not the greatest book in the series.

Dande:
Well, I didn't know which one to start with, except for the first one, you know?

Wvskier:
Dragonflight is just information. Basically, they are introducing you to the characters, they are introducing you to the plot.

Newhope:
Well every last paragraph basically sets it up for a sequel. It totally does.

Lasagna:
Are all of the other ones good?

Wvskier:
Oh, yeah. They're a lot better.

Dande:
They're really different. She doesn't get stuck in a series thing where she is writing the same books over and over again. She writes them in the same world, but they're really different books.

Wvskier:
Because there's also this Harper trilogy where it goes on mainly in the Harper Hall—it's corresponding with this timeline, but it's a completely different point of view.

Walle:
So are there other books that include these characters from their point of views? Or do they keep switching?

Wvskier:
They are actually minor characters in other books. It's pretty interesting.

Walle:
But does it still stick to Lessa's and F'lar's perspectives sometimes?

Dande:
I don't think so . . .

Wvskier:
Lessa and F'lar are important characters, but you're not following their plotline specifically anymore.

DragonFlight -- Colors & Eggs

Dande:
So anything else people wanted to talk about with the book?

Walle:
I wanted to talk about the entire dragon heirarchy, where green is the lowest, and then blue, and then brown, then bronze, and then gold. So there were no gold males, or something?

Dande:
No, golds were just queens.

Wvskier:
Golds are always female, bronzes are always male, blues and browns are always male, and greens are female. Though greens don't normally mate, and they can't if they breathe firestone.

Lasagna:
So they're color-coded?

Newhope:
Color-coded for your convenience, yes.

* * *

Walle:
So it takes two years for a queen dragon to mature?

Dande:
I think she was growing even faster than usual because she's so awesome.

Walle:
But then why did they send them back ten years—or Turns—if it only takes two years?

Dande:
I think that they weren't supposed to be there the whole ten years. I think they were supposed to be there for a couple years, and then come back.

Newhope:
No, no no no. It wasn't that they just wanted her to mature. They wanted to keep pumping out the eggs.

Dande:
Pumping?

[laughs]

Dande:
Yeah, okay.

Newhope:
They needed to be fully mature enough to fly, the hatchlings.

DragonFlight -- Thread & Title

Dande:
When you read about the world in the rest of the series, it definitely seems like a good place. You get to care about Pern as a world.

Wvskier:
You understand more. You understand why they're there, how they deal with their problems, and how other people, the antagonists, try to stop them, but the protagonists always pull through.

Dande:
Mm-hmm. And I like the idea—the Threads were really so dangerous. If one little Thread got in the ground it would destroy a whole area. And so everything was so important, they really had to work together so well. During that fifty years when it was a Pass, every single day, every single time they went out, was so important.

Wvskier:
Yeah, but it's just a daily job, just like a firefighter or something. They go out to fire's all the time, and it is really dangerous.

* * *

Newhope:
What do you think about the title? DragonFlight? Why do you think she chose it?

Dande:
I don't know. Because there are dragons?

Lasagna:
And they're flying?

Newhope:
It's a pretty bad title.

Walle:
I think the idea of flying between was so important, it comes to do with the main plot of what happens and allows them to save their land, so that's why I think she chose the flight part of DragonFlight.

DragonFlight -- Thrown In & Style (Part 2) & Threadfall

Walle:
It said that the Thread eats or whatever, burns up, any organic thing it finds, so if there was a Threadfall in the beginning, how did anything survive at all?

Newhope:

That's what I want to know. How did this whole thing start?

Wvskier:
When humans came, they were in the middle of an Interval.

Dande:

The reason there was an ecosystem at all was because they thought it was a planet that was mostly barren, but had a few good spots. They didn't realize that there was Thread.

Walle:
But if it kills everything that's organic then the humans should have died out too.

Wvskier:

Well, they almost did. They managed to find shelter under stone. That's what the holds are made of, they're made of stone in cliff faces in the north. Thread does not go through stone.

Lasagna:
Oh, that's what they were talking about in the beginning of the book! I get it now. She's like, "They don't even make their things out of stone anymore." I'm like, "So? Why does that matter?"

Walle:

Yeah, in the beginning they spent so much time focusing on how there was so much greenery growing everywhere, and I wasn't sure what that meant because it seemed so random to notice weeds.

Dande:
I kind of like that. I didn't like that because it was confusing, but at the end of the book, once you understand it, it makes sense. She just threw you into the world, and she didn't try to talk down to you. So it's confusing but once you get it, everything falls into place, and all their little pieces of conversation have a place. 

Lasagna:

But I just don't think it's good for a book to just start out throwing you into it, all these weird names, stuff you don't get.

Wvskier:
That's what's unique about her style.

DragonFlight -- Thrown In & Style (Part 1)

Lasagna:
I don't think I read far enough into this to actually get anything, because this is one of those books where they just throw you right into it, and you have to think for a little bit about what it's talking about and then you'll understand it. I just didn't really get it.

Dande:

When I was reading it recently to reread it, it was different for me because—while I knew that all these cool, interesting, great things came later, and so I kept reading, but I was thinking that if I just started reading this book now, I probably wouldn't keep reading through it. The beginning would have totally turned me off. I must have been a more open reader five years ago when I read it for the first time.

Smiley:
In the beginning, you know when Fax, F'lar—I always say flare when I'm reading it, but I know it's F'lar—Fax, F'lar, and F'nor, you know when they're all talking, and after they say one sentence, it's like, "Oh, he directed this insult at him. Oh, he said it like this." That was kind of annoying to me to get past. If they said it once, "they said it insultingly," then OK, I get it. But they kept mentioning it throughout the whole dialog. "Oh, he said it like this, which was so insulting. Oh, he said it like that, which was so OhMyGosh."


[laughs]


Smiley:
It was annoying, in a way.

Wvskier:

In later books, she actually sort of changes her style. She doesn't do that as much, and she actually has the dragons talk directly.

Dande:
Yeah, I'm not sure if this was her first book overall, but it was definitely her first book in this whole series that lasted thirty years. So we could cut her some slack, maybe.

Smiley:

I don't think I was able to enjoy it as much because I was trying to read by today as a deadline.

Dande:
I gave it to you last week!

Smiley:

But I haven't read it since, like, today!

DragonFlight -- First Impressions & Terms (Part 2)

Dande:

Also, it was supposed to be a medieval culture—how were they so advanced to figure out a year is a Turn [and call it that]? We didn't figure that out until a couple hundred years ago.

Smiley:

Maybe they were smart.

Lasagna:

Didn't they come from Earth, or something? But they didn't know [it]?

Wvskier:

Well, they lost their technology over the years. Right now, there's no electricity or anything. They lost it because they don't have a fuel source.

Dande:

If you read the rest of the series, they were colonists that—

Lasagna:

It says that in the beginning of the book.

Dande:

It does?

Lasagna:

Yeah, it says something about how they came from Earth but they don't remember it.

Wvskier:

Now it's two thousand years later.

Walle:

They came here? Oh—I thought this was a completely different planet which developed humanity.

Dande:

No. Well, it's supposed to like that, in this book. This book is a fantasy book, and that's what fantasy books are: humans in a different world where they never were anywhere else. The series starts out as fantasy, and then it morphs into science fiction at the end.

* * *

Newhope:

What did you think about the different terms that meant the same thing, such as "Turn" and "year."

Smiley:

Yeah, yeah!

Newhope:

They said "year." So I'm like, "Then what's a Turn?"

Smiley:

Yeah, I was so confused. I'm like, "Is Turn their year?" But then they say "year."

Walle:

In the beginning, I thought a Turn was a day, because a turn is a rotation.

Smiley:

Yeah, I thought it was a cycle.

DragonFlight by Anne McCaffrey

Dande here! This month the focus of this blog will be DragonFlight by Anne McCaffrey. DragonFlight was published in 1968 and is the first book in The Dragonriders of Pern series. The epic series contains almost two dozen books that take place at various times in the history of the planet Pern.

Overall, we enjoyed our DragonFlight meeting, but we intend to pick more recent books to read in the future, if only so that there will not be such an imbalance between those who have read later books and those who have not.

Our discussion revolved around a few key things: the dragging middle, the unique solution at the end, and the fact that many of our questions about the world would be explained later in the series. The two attendees who had read other books in the series agreed that the quality of the series improves as it goes on. We hope you enjoy eavesdropping on our discussion and contributing your own thoughts in the comments!

The schedule for DragonFlight posts is as follows:

• Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 -- First Impressions & Terms (Part 1)
• Thursday, July 29th, 2010 -- First Impressions & Terms (Part 2)
• Friday, July 30th, 2010 -- Thrown In & Style (Part 1)
• Monday, August 2nd, 2010 -- Thrown In & Style (Part 2) & Threadfall
• Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 -- Firestone & Games
• Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 -- Middle Muddle (Part 1)
• Thursday, August 5th, 2010 -- Middle Muddle (Part 2)
• Friday, August 6th, 2010 -- Lessa and F'lar & Power
• Monday, August 9th, 2010 -- Thread & Title
• Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 -- Colors & Eggs
• Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 -- Politics (Part 1)
• Thursday, August 12th, 2010 -- Politics (Part 2) & Population Control
• Friday, August 13th, 2010 -- The Between, The End, & A Paradox
• Monday, August 16th, 2010 -- The Rest of the Series (Part 1)
• Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 --- The Rest of the Series (Part 2)
• Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 -- Bloopers: When You're Not in The Room
• Thursday, August 19th, 2010 -- Final Thoughts (Part 1)
• Friday, August 20th, 2010 -- Final Thoughts (Part 2)

At this meeting: Newhope, Dande, Walle, Wvskier, Smiley, Chair, Lasagna, Jolly

The Next Book: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins