Dragongirl, by Todd McCaffrey is the 19th book in the Pern series and the second one he has written on his own, though he has collaborated with his mother Anne on four others in the series. The Pern series is very close to my heart. It was one of the first series of books in which I was introduced to dragons, way back when I was a youngling. I’ve been fascinated with them ever since. So it is very hard for me to be critical of it in any way because, DRAGONS!–right? Cool, helpful, caring and fun to be with DRAGONS! What else is there to know? That being said, I’ll see if I can find something else in the book that isn’t DRAGONS!
Dragongirl follows directly after Dragonheart wherein Fiona utilizes the dragons’ ability to go between to harness time. Now she is back in her current time, three years older biologically and with all the knowledge of running her own weyr. Now that she is back, she needs to turn her mind to more problems that will need some sort of solution, and soon. First, the dragons are still getting sick, and the cure has yet to be found. To make matters worse, the sickness is making all the weyrs under-strength in numbers of dragons. This becomes an even bigger issue later when the numbers of dragon eggs is found to be dwindling. With a decreasing dragon population, how will the human population survive the Threadfall?
While reading this book, I found it to be pretty engaging. The characters, for the most part, are likeable and interesting and make me want to follow along with their stories. However, I did have some issues with it. The first issue deals with the matter of time travel. When it was used before, it was an experiment, and they did it away from all the other weyrs and in secret. However, since that experiment seemed to have been such a success, there seems to be a growing sentiment that it can be the cure for all ills. Time travel is sort of a tricky thing to think about to begin with–confusing and full of paradoxes and impossibilities, and yet none of the characters wanted to consider the ideas that most people come up with when time travel is discussed “go back and fix X” with X being whatever ill has beset them at the current time. Not a single person suggests going back to isolate the dragons and not let them all get sick in the first place. Nobody suggests going back and fixing the mistakes of each Threadfall that kills a dragon and/or rider. While those suggestions, had they been made, would probably have been tossed out as unworkable, I was very surprised to find that not one character even hinted at making these types of suggestions.
The other issue deals with the unrelenting goodness of the main character. She has so much love to give that she just spreads joy and happiness wherever she goes. It got to be a little bit aggravating to hear from all and sundry that she was a “gift” to the world. Even people with bad attitudes turn over a new leaf after a single meeting with her. I found all of this goodness and light to be just a tad overdone. Additionally, her romantic situation kept getting more complicated, and she kept drawing more people into her little web of love. I don’t have a problem with her number of partners as such, just that it felt completely unreal–there was only the tiniest bit of trouble over it, and nobody complained, nobody whined, and nobody made nasty, snide comments behind her back. I would have expected there to be a least a bit of unrest or maybe a little bit of protest from one or another of the participants. There was a small objection by one, but that seemed to go away after another night in the sheets with our fabulously sharing protagonist.
Despite how that last paragraph sounds, I didn’t hate this book. I truly enjoyed it and kept turning those pages as quickly as I could. Most of the insight above came from thinking about the story after it was complete–not while actually enjoying it. Once the book was closed and I had learned all that I was going to about Fiona and the dragons of Pern this time around, I actually began to think about the story as a whole. So while I found a few things to be just a tad off of center after finishing the story, the story itself was done well enough to keep most of the criticism out of my mind while I was enjoying it. So for Pern fans, this addition to the series is most definitely a must. For those unfamiliar with Pern, you may be able to enjoy this story for itself, although you will definitely want to read Dragonheart first to understand the current problems–though if you are new, I would suggest beginning with some of the earlier books to get a flavor for the world and its inhabitants. You know, DRAGONS! For those who have abandoned the series after all of these years, perhaps you should go back and discover again the wonder that is DRAGONS!
