Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey

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language: English
country: USA
year: 1976
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Dragonriders of Pern, #3
dates read: 15.6.18-16.6.18, 2.8.24-5.8.24

I am rereading (almost) all of the Pern books, slightly out of order, for reasons which will soon be revealed, and so I made my partner listen to Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsong with me on a long drive recently.

Dragonsong was published as a children’s book, and you can really tell, because, firstly, the editing is way better and, secondly, it stands very much apart from the first two books in the series, Dragonflight and Dragonquest — though it overlaps chronologically with Dragonquest and shows a particularly important incident in Dragonquest from an alternate perspective. it also begins with a preface that provides lengthy summary of Dragonflight, so truly you can enter Dragonsong without having read any other Pern books — it was my introduction to the series, and it’s one of the only two books I more or less wholeheartedly recommend (plus Dragonflight as a matter of historical interest).

the book follows Menolly, a 14-year-old girl living in an isolated fishing settlement, Half-Circle Sea Hold. she has an incredible gift for music — playing, singing, composing — but, because she’s a girl, her family regards her as a disappointment, a wayward child who needs to be disciplined into her proper place, now that the old Harper who was her mentor has died and there’s no-one else to keep tabs on her. their mix of willful neglect and active abuse — her father beats her for playing one of her songs — drives her to run away from the Hold. she finds shelter with a group of firelizards (essentially miniature dragons) and ultimately finds herself at one of the Weyrs, the communities of the series’s iconic dragonriders.

this book and its immediate sequel, Dragonsinger, are really compelling as the story of someone who in many ways reads as if she were a Mary Sue — Menolly has a frankly absurd gift for music — but who is genuinely hamstrung by her traumatic backstory in a way that feels realistic and deserved even as it’s devastating. when the new Harper arrives, Menolly hopes he’ll come with news that some of her songs are good, and even though the old Harper implied that she was good enough to go to the Harper Hall and receive formal training, the best outcome she can imagine is that maybe her parents won’t be quite so hard on her about her music. that’s the best she can hope for. genuinely horrifyingly sad! and so when — spoiler alert — she finally emerges triumphant, it is so, so satisfying.

also, Menolly, uh…well, she sure can’t interpret social cues even a little bit! this comes out more in Dragonsinger but it’s very noticeable in the weyr section. hmmmmmmm.

there’s also a lot going on in this and the next book about status — a lot of Menolly’s difficulties from the weyr on are rooted in people making incorrect assumptions about the trajectory of her life based on the knowledge that she’s the daughter of the Sea Holder (the feudal lord of Half-Circle), when in fact her life did not in any way resemble people’s conception of what a young woman born to a family of successful feudal aristocrats should have experienced. I hadn’t really registered this until this time around, despite how many, many times I’ve listened to this book.

anyway, I’m just rambling. I love this book and if any part of this sounds interesting to you I think you should read it!

moods: adventurous, dark, emotional


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