Saturday, 31 March 2012 06:14 pm
Book review: Dragonflight
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deckardcanineHave you ever fallen into the trap of picking up a mediocre story, sticking with it in the hope that it gets much better (perhaps encouraged when it gets a little better but not great), and then staying to the end because there's not much left? I imagine it's common among people who read novels for pleasure, tho it's not unique to this medium. Offhand, the best thing I have to say about the first volume of the late Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern is that it ends well for a non-final volume: resolved enough to end without suspense, yet hinting at excitement to come.
I'm unsure whether my parents found this book on a fantasy shelf or a sci-fi shelf. On one hand, it takes places millennia from now on a planet, Pern, long colonized by humans. On the other hand, they've completely forgotten their Earth origins and, thanks to resource deficits, show no sign of any technology that wasn't present in ancient times. Their social sophistication seems no better.
Then of course there are the dragons. At first I kept thinking of Jane Yolen's quaint Pitdragon series, in which humans on a desert planet raise intelligent, telepathic alien dragons as pets, food, and arena fighters (Yolen dragons have scales too prickly to ride). But a McCaffrey dragon generally limits telepathy to fellow dragons and the one human to whom it bonds emotionally after hatching -- the exception being the main woman, Lessa, who not only reads all dragons but inexplicably can wield some psionic influence over other humans. In addition, these dragons can teleport and... OK, I won't say what else, but the ability gets discovered pretty far along, and long-time readers of my LJ know I don't like its sudden injection in "serious" works.
My 1984 printing has quite a few typos, which happens a lot in fantasy and sci-fi thanks to made-up words and names. I guess the dialog is supposed to be translated from some future language, aside from a few words with no cognate that I recognize, tho they do say "agenothree" for HNO3, a.k.a. nitric acid. Might I mention that there's no evidence of any linguistic evolution in a span of 400 years. Speaking of years, I first assumed that the use of capitalized "Turn" for a Pernese revolution was supposed to help us remember that it's not an Earth year, but supplementary materials tell me that they're essentially the same length. And sometimes they sloppily say "year" instead. I can only imagine what James Blish, the sci-fi author and critic who condemned "calling a rabbit a smeerp," might have said about that as well as "sevenday."
True, these smeerps may mean to highlight the aforementioned drop in sophistication. The text never uses big words like "teleport," for instance; dragons are said to "go between" (always in italics) to places pictured in the rider's mind. But I'm convinced that McCaffrey was still getting the hang of writing in 1968. Another sign of this is the inconsistency of perspective. I don't mind multiple POVs as long as they're separated by chapter or subchapter, but a sudden one-paragraph shift is jarring. Mercifully, the POV is usually that of either Lessa or her Rhett Butler stand-in, F'lar.
Ordinarily I'd be ashamed to declare that a story was very much a woman's writing. But my first exposure to McCaffrey was in a collection called Women of Wonder, in which I enjoyed "The Ship Who Sang" but could hardly escape the implicit gender politics therein. In Dragonflight, women appear only as maids and sex slaves until Lessa proves how headstrong and awesome she is, yet she can't help falling in love with a man who has already had unwelcome sex with her. (To his credit, he feels bad that he "might as well call it rape," and she doesn't mind as long as their dragons shag at the same time.)
Oh, and sex appears to be the only thing anyone ever does for sheer pleasure, apart from snide remarks. Games, songs, and tapestries exist, but always for preparatory purposes. It took me a while (and a reread of the too-brief prologue) to realize that almost everything F'lar and his underlings do means to deal with a periodic menace called the Threads, highly destructive life forms that rain down from a nearby planet and require many dragons to combat. Unfortunately, these periods get so long that too few people believe in the necessity of his otherwise ethically indefensible demands. So... what do they do in their free time? Is Pern so barren that even the warlords struggle too much to enjoy arts and entertainment?
This actually ties in with a larger problem in the book as a whole: lack of description. We get very few ideas of the landscape, the fauna and flora, the housing structures (preferring caves is no excuse), the furniture, the clothes, or individual human looks. McCaffrey focuses on the "important" stuff about as relentlessly as Lessa and F'lar do. If only she knew how important the little things were! I don't get immersed in a world that leaves that much to the imagination. I don't emotionally invest in single-minded characters with only a couple details of appearance. And when a world sounds like no fun to live in, I need reassurance that the heroes are right to bother saving it.
Dragonflight has no cogent philosophy; it's too far removed for that. I didn't really expect one. I did expect at least the mindless entertainment value of a pulp fantasy. Alas, it reads kind of like a pulp romance (going solely by reputation) with a few manly violent scenes thrown in. You probably need more womanly taste than mine to consider it worth your while.
Next on my reading list is Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It's much longer than Dragonflight, but I may just finish it faster. From the excerpts I know, he was one smart writer.
I'm unsure whether my parents found this book on a fantasy shelf or a sci-fi shelf. On one hand, it takes places millennia from now on a planet, Pern, long colonized by humans. On the other hand, they've completely forgotten their Earth origins and, thanks to resource deficits, show no sign of any technology that wasn't present in ancient times. Their social sophistication seems no better.
Then of course there are the dragons. At first I kept thinking of Jane Yolen's quaint Pitdragon series, in which humans on a desert planet raise intelligent, telepathic alien dragons as pets, food, and arena fighters (Yolen dragons have scales too prickly to ride). But a McCaffrey dragon generally limits telepathy to fellow dragons and the one human to whom it bonds emotionally after hatching -- the exception being the main woman, Lessa, who not only reads all dragons but inexplicably can wield some psionic influence over other humans. In addition, these dragons can teleport and... OK, I won't say what else, but the ability gets discovered pretty far along, and long-time readers of my LJ know I don't like its sudden injection in "serious" works.
My 1984 printing has quite a few typos, which happens a lot in fantasy and sci-fi thanks to made-up words and names. I guess the dialog is supposed to be translated from some future language, aside from a few words with no cognate that I recognize, tho they do say "agenothree" for HNO3, a.k.a. nitric acid. Might I mention that there's no evidence of any linguistic evolution in a span of 400 years. Speaking of years, I first assumed that the use of capitalized "Turn" for a Pernese revolution was supposed to help us remember that it's not an Earth year, but supplementary materials tell me that they're essentially the same length. And sometimes they sloppily say "year" instead. I can only imagine what James Blish, the sci-fi author and critic who condemned "calling a rabbit a smeerp," might have said about that as well as "sevenday."
True, these smeerps may mean to highlight the aforementioned drop in sophistication. The text never uses big words like "teleport," for instance; dragons are said to "go between" (always in italics) to places pictured in the rider's mind. But I'm convinced that McCaffrey was still getting the hang of writing in 1968. Another sign of this is the inconsistency of perspective. I don't mind multiple POVs as long as they're separated by chapter or subchapter, but a sudden one-paragraph shift is jarring. Mercifully, the POV is usually that of either Lessa or her Rhett Butler stand-in, F'lar.
Ordinarily I'd be ashamed to declare that a story was very much a woman's writing. But my first exposure to McCaffrey was in a collection called Women of Wonder, in which I enjoyed "The Ship Who Sang" but could hardly escape the implicit gender politics therein. In Dragonflight, women appear only as maids and sex slaves until Lessa proves how headstrong and awesome she is, yet she can't help falling in love with a man who has already had unwelcome sex with her. (To his credit, he feels bad that he "might as well call it rape," and she doesn't mind as long as their dragons shag at the same time.)
Oh, and sex appears to be the only thing anyone ever does for sheer pleasure, apart from snide remarks. Games, songs, and tapestries exist, but always for preparatory purposes. It took me a while (and a reread of the too-brief prologue) to realize that almost everything F'lar and his underlings do means to deal with a periodic menace called the Threads, highly destructive life forms that rain down from a nearby planet and require many dragons to combat. Unfortunately, these periods get so long that too few people believe in the necessity of his otherwise ethically indefensible demands. So... what do they do in their free time? Is Pern so barren that even the warlords struggle too much to enjoy arts and entertainment?
This actually ties in with a larger problem in the book as a whole: lack of description. We get very few ideas of the landscape, the fauna and flora, the housing structures (preferring caves is no excuse), the furniture, the clothes, or individual human looks. McCaffrey focuses on the "important" stuff about as relentlessly as Lessa and F'lar do. If only she knew how important the little things were! I don't get immersed in a world that leaves that much to the imagination. I don't emotionally invest in single-minded characters with only a couple details of appearance. And when a world sounds like no fun to live in, I need reassurance that the heroes are right to bother saving it.
Dragonflight has no cogent philosophy; it's too far removed for that. I didn't really expect one. I did expect at least the mindless entertainment value of a pulp fantasy. Alas, it reads kind of like a pulp romance (going solely by reputation) with a few manly violent scenes thrown in. You probably need more womanly taste than mine to consider it worth your while.
Next on my reading list is Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It's much longer than Dragonflight, but I may just finish it faster. From the excerpts I know, he was one smart writer.
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no subject
I learned a fair amount from Stranger, hope you do too.
no subject
"Stranger in a Strange Land" is a classic of the sci-fi genre; the interesting twist is that the only alien is a human being who was raised by aliens. Anyone who has ever been a writer will have a soft spot for Jubal Harshaw, one of the side characters. The book is rather weird in places (a fault in many of Heinlein's later works) but still quite memorable.