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language: English
country: USA
year: 1989
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Dragonriders of Pern, #10
dates read: 5.8.13-8.8.13, 24.9.21-27.9.21, 23.8.24-28.8.24
Anne McCaffrey’s The Renegades of Pern has two main problems.
the first problem is structural: fundamentally, it’s not one book; it’s three books that she’s stuck together for some reason.
one of these is the story of Jayge Lilcamp, a young Trader (= an itinerant community, not just merchants in general) who finds himself caught up in a conflict between Pern’s political establishment and the self-styled “Lady Holdless”, Thella, a bandit who is pursuing a vendetta against the Lilcamp traders and also a young woman named Aramina who can hear all dragons. Jayge’s quest to avenge Thella’s murder of members of his family leads him across the continent and finally to the Southern Continent, where he and Aramina attempt to build a new life for themselves. I think this could have been good had it been presented in self-contained form, but instead it felt like a disconnected afterthought.
the second of the books is just a somewhat abridged retelling of The White Dragon (and parts of Dragondrums), but this time from the perspective of Piemur, a rebellious young Harper tasked with mapping the Southern Continent, and Toric, the ambitious lord of Southern Hold. this didn’t really add anything to what we’d already seen in the other books, and so large parts of the book felt like kind of pointless filler.
the last of the books is a direct continuation of the archaeology plot in The White Dragon, and unfortunately it’s actually somewhat engaging — enough so that I’ve found myself over the last few days thinking, “I can’t wait to get to All the Weyrs of Pern” (not something I ever expected to feel). I think I would have preferred if there were just a book entirely focused on the archaeology on the Southern Continent — which could still have ended with the tantalizing cliffhanger the book ends with.
the second main problem with Renegades is its politics. it opens very strong, with a series of glimpses of people becoming Holdless for various reasons, a sharply pointed look at the evils of feudal power and the limits of Pern’s (and Pern’s) lip service to libertarianism. it is ultimately, however, a classic example of liberal storytelling’s approach to structural problems: it posits a large population of dissatisfied “Holdless” people who have been victimized by the arbitrary feudal power of Lord Holders (belying the libertarian premise of the series); then, instead of addressing their legitimate grievances with the political system they live in, it gives them a leader who is cartoon-villain evil. when she’s defeated, we have Solved The Problem, despite not making a single change to the actual structures that created the problem in the first place (in this case we might also add the sexism that saw Thella laughed out of the Conclave when she tried to formally present herself as a candidate for Lord Holder after her father died).
all in all, about one third of this book is not too bad; another third could have been good if it had been presented on its own (except for its liberal politics); and another third was simply unnecessary.
moods: adventurous, dark (more so than McCaffrey intended, I think)