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language: English
country: USA
year: 1996
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Dragonriders of Pern, #13
dates read: 5.3.21-8.3.21, 14.4.25-18.4.25
Anne McCaffrey’s Red Star Rising — published in North America with slightly different text as Dragonseye — is bonkers even for a Pern novel. like The Renegades of Pern, it feels like multiple books squished together, not entirely successfully. in pleasant contrast to Renegades, however, several of the books that are squished in here are actually good, and all of them are at least interesting, even if many of the world-building decisions here are genuinely baffling.
Red Star Rising is a prequel novel — it’s subtitled “The Second Chronicles of Pern”, following First Fall, though the subtitle isn’t included on Dragonseye, for some reason — set just before the beginning of the Second Pass, about 250 years after humans first colonized Pern. on the eve of the return of Thread, the novel’s characters confront a bunch of different challenges:
these stories are intertwined through a few different perspectives: K’vin, the new, young Weyrleader of Telgar Weyr; Paulin, the Lord Holder of Fort Hold and head of the Council; Clisser, the head of the College; P’tero, a reckless young blue rider in a long term relationship with a male green rider; Debera, a young woman who has fled her home Hold to become a dragonrider; Iantine, an overconfident but skilled young painter; and a few others who get little bits and pieces.
broadly, the novel is trying to bridge the world-building gap between the heavily science-fictional world of the original colonists in Dragonsdawn and the feudal sociopolitical structure of the chronologically later books. in this it is…not entirely successful, primarily because the feudal structure is already mostly established by this book, except for the absence of the formal Craft system. the main problem here is education. the novel is extremely focused on the Pernese education system, but what it shows us is unhinged. the College has been continuing to teach history, advanced sciences, and also music and apparently visual art (no sign of literature), but primary instruction is carried out by peripatetic instructors who travel between multiple settlements and subject to feudal lords’ limitations. small wonder that literacy is on the decline and nobody — even many of the teachers themselves — knows all of their legal rights!
for some bizarre reason, however, the solution to this problem that the novel settles on is: we should eliminate all instruction in history and the sciences, and instead of teaching people to read and understand the Charter we should simplify it into a catchy pop song that children can learn before they learn how to read (if they ever learn how to read). the people who object that, actually, understanding pre-Pern history is relevant to understanding Pern history are presented as foolish idealists who need to be gently but firmly overrules.
I’m going to be honest, I don’t really see how any of this is going to fix their literacy and political ignorance problem, especially when a big part of the problem isn’t even that people are ignorant but that their feudal lords have the power — even if not technically the legal right — to arbitrarily prevent them from exercising their Charter rights. the Chalkin plot foregrounds all of the essential flaws with Pern’s political system, but the novel doesn’t appear to recognize them as essential flaws — they’re presented as if they were one-time outliers.
in spite of this unhinged throughline, however, I actually have come to enjoy this book. it feels in a lot of ways like a return to Dragonflight: characterization matters again, we care about logistics and resource distribution, the narrative focuses on the relationship between legend/myth and history (among other things). one highlight relative to the series as a whole is that several sections are from P’tero’s perspective — he and his boyfriend have fade-to-black sex, even! in spite of also having some of the most homophobic passages in the whole series, I really appreciate that we get this much focus on a gay man and his relationship with his partner.
the two straight relationships that also get a bunch of page time — K’vin’s relationship with the Telgar Weyrwoman, Zulaya, and Debera and Iantine’s relationship — are, if not particularly inspiring (though Debera and Iantine are better than K’vin and Zulaya), at least tolerable and reasonably well developed, which is more than can be said for many others in the series. there are a bunch of endearing minor characters, as well — I’m particularly fond of Leopol, a Weyr boy who has the vibe of the kid Pippin makes friends with in Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings, and and B’nurrin, the Igen Weyrleader with a fun sense of humor.
the pacing is bizarre, in the sense that nothing of real narrative consequence happens in the last sixty pages, but in some ways that’s actually nice: it means that the book isn’t so urgently driven by Plot the way All the Weyrs of Pern (for example) was, so it actually has time to just sit in its world and with its characters. if the plot is meandering, it’s in a fun way. I certainly wouldn’t want every book to be like this, but it’s a nice farewell to the series — except for the part where there are two more novels.
I have a lot more to say about this book — the good and the bad — but you’ll have to wait for the podcast episode to hear it. ;-)
moods: dark, hopeful, horny, reflective, wacky