Dragonquest

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / McCaffrey, Anne, Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / McCaffrey, Anne, Fantasy / McCaffrey, Anne
On Shelf At: Pittsfield Branch, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / McCaffrey, Anne	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / McCaffrey, Anne	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / McCaffrey, Anne	4-week checkout	Due 05-18-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / McCaffrey, Anne	4-week checkout	Due 05-18-2024

"A Del Rey book."

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

I loved this book, but it hasn't aged well submitted by valeriemates on August 22, 2019, 4:38pm I loved this book when I first read it and Anne McCaffrey's other Dragonbooks, back in the 1980s. But it hasn't aged well, and reading it out loud to my kids was a mistake.

This is the sequel to Dragonflight. The series is set on a planet called Pern, which has a type of weather called "Thread" that falls from the sky and devours all life that it touches. Dragonriders are telepathically bonded with their dragons. They fly during threadstorms and burn the thread out of the sky before it can fall to the ground and hurt people and destroy living things. I love the idea of Dragonriders protecting the planet.

What I don't love is that there are some seriously weird sex scenes in these books, like for example where the dragons decide to have sex and so their telepathically bonded riders are in awkward situations because of it. Also there is a scene in this book where a dragonrider rapes a woman to cure her of her depression. In the book, that actually works, but in the real world, in these days of the "Me Too" movement, ideas about consent have evolved so much that it is painful to read that scene anymore.

Anyway, that said, McCaffrey is a spellbinding page-turner of an author. So what to tell you about this book is complicated.

Dragonquest submitted by SBNB on June 23, 2020, 10:47am This was a great second book in Pern! I liked it!

Your Fantasy Novel Doesn't Need Misogyny to be Interesting submitted by am_nich21 on August 6, 2023, 10:35am Definitely a comfort reread for me, but dang does McCaffrey hate women. The universe of Pern is incredibly misogynistic and women are treated more as sex objects (with the exceptions of lessa and brekke) than anything else. also. uh. the weirdness around oooo the weyrs are so ~promiscuous ~ women can have ~sex~ here. But then, the only named women who, you know, do that... are treated as evil, manipulative, and barely human by the narrative? legitimately what are we even doing here. There are a thousand more interesting choices McCaffrey could have made in this book, and she chose to be boring for...shock value? I honestly don't know.

Side note on bad worldbuilding, this book could have done without bad infertility science, it adds nothing.

Despite all this, the storyline is really enjoyable to me, probably because I've read it a thousand times, but I have more trouble now reconciling it with the aggressively patriarchal world building.

I like this series for nostalgia reasons, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it. There are better fantasy series out there. Read one of them instead.