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language: English
country: USA
year: 2001
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Dragonriders of Pern, #15
dates read: 22.7.25-23.7.25
I am genuinely shocked to report that, after rereading it for the first time since, I believe, 2001, The Skies of Pern is very good, actually. given its silly-sounding plot, this is frankly kind of baffling, but McCaffrey pulls it off.
now, to be clear, this isn’t to say that it doesn’t have problems. these are, however, by and large simply problems that are par for the course for Pern, particularly its unhinged representation of the legal system, commitment to summary justice, and copagandistic framing of (accused) criminals’ demands that their legal rights be respected as either laughable (real exchange from the book: “We have rights!” / “You just lost ’em”) or, at best, an inconvenience.
the book interweaves two plotlines, following from All the Weyrs of Pern and The Dolphins of Pern.
in the smaller of the two narratives, the Abominators — last seen in All the Weyrs of Pern — a group of people who believe the social and technological changes emerging from Pern’s rediscovery of its history and the technical information provided by AIVAS, are back and staging organized attacks on institutions that make use of new technologies: first a simultaneous attack on Healer facilities across the planet and then an attempt to destroy the nascent Printer Hall. the novel follows the efforts of the Harper spy “Pinch” to track down the leaders of the Abominators, in particular an enigmatic man he knows only as “Fifth”, although the readers know from the beginning that his name is Shankolin and that he’s the son of one of the original Abominator leaders. I’m not sure what she thought this asymmetry of knowledge was adding, because it wasn’t dramatically ironic, just kind of weird and annoying. I kept waiting for them to figure it out, but they never did.
given some specific things about the framing of this — the attack on medical facilities, the characterization of the Abominators as trying to deny others the free and informed “choice” of which technologies to adopt — I suspect McCaffrey was thinking about anti-abortion violence in the ’90s, but in the broader context there are hints that something else may be — in spite of McCaffrey — at work here. a number of the Abominators, ultimately including Lord Toric of Southern Hold, are not simply reactionary fanatics obsessed with tradition but either (1) disgruntled because they believe they are being denied access to wealth and power they “deserve” or (2) skeptical not (only) of the technologies themselves but of the distribution of these technologies.
on point (1), Toric is exemplary of the extent to which Pern is moving inexorably towards some kind of bourgeois revolution. while legally he’s a member of the aristocracy, his mindset is unquestionably bourgeois rather than aristocratic, and he continues to regard the traditional aristocracy as an obstacle to his acccumulation of further wealth.
on point (2), this concern is framed very explicitly at one point as a concern about cost, and given what we know about the distribution of new technologies both on Pern and in the primary world — that they are, in fact, expensive and that they tend to be available first and foremost to (on Pern) aristocrats and ranking Crafters and (in the primary world) people in the Global North — this strikes me as an extremely reasonable and correct concern. unfortunately, McCaffrey immediately reframes it as if the problem is simply that these (largely poor) people are ignorant of the benefits of new technologies, focusing in particular on economically marginal(ized) communities: rural “hill folk”, itinerant populations, and similar. this dismissal of the marginalized is normal for Pern but still a bad look.
fortunately, the Abominators plot is secondary to the main plot and the definite highlight of the novel, namely, the question raised both in All the Weyrs of Pern and again in Dolphins: what are dragonriders and dragons going to do after Thread ends?
our dragonrider protagonists are F’lessan, the son of F’lar and Lessa, who has begun to leave behind his happy-go-lucky misspent youth and behave as a serious, professional (though still charmingly mischievous) adult, and Tai, a female green rider who was apprenticed to an astronomer before she unexpectedly Impressed her dragon. this narrative follows the development of both their professional and personal relationships, and it’s quite good.
professionally: about a third of the way through the novel, a meteor strikes Pern’s ocean, triggering devastating tsunamis that, in one of the most compelling sequences in the whole series, put dragonriders under intense time pressure to help people living in the affected areas evacuate. McCaffrey pulls out all the stops here and it’s really good as a result. in the aftermath of this disaster, coupled with the discovery of a new draconic ability, dragonriders lay the groundwork for a new future for themselves as astronomers and astronauts protecting Pern from future incidents of this kind.
personally: of course F’lessan and Tai fall in love, mediated through their dragons — but this is complicated by Tai’s prior experience with mating flights, which have for her all been violent. the mating flight scene in this book is unhinged and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it (stay tuned lol), but broadly I think their relationship is really well-handled. both get significant character development over the course of the novel, and, while they’re still in some ways trapped in the regressive gender politics of Pern/Pern, by the end of the book this is one of the closest relationships in the series to genuinely feeling like a partnership of equals. particularly striking is the final section of the book, where they’re attacked by the large felines of the Southern Continent, leaving both of them bed-bound and F’lessan (and Golanth) likely permanently disabled. considering how awful the series has been about disability at other points this was a shockingly sensitive portrayal of F’lessan’s coming-to-terms with this reality and reorienting his self-perception. (also Lytol finally gets the respect he deserves!)
given that the dragonriders-as-space-force plot sounds, in the abstract, contrived and silly, I was surprised to find that when the Weyrleaders and their dragons realize this possibility and have a moment of “oh, wow, there are new, previously unimagined doors opening for us” it worked for me. I get it! and I’m sad that we didn’t get to see the dragonriders actually doing the kind of space work they’re talking about (deploying satellites!!!!), but I found this to be a genuinely satisfying conclusion to the series in a way that I was not at all expecting.
moods: hopeful, reflective, tense