I've been reading Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels for almost ten years. I've read many of them multiple times, and I feel that I know the world pretty well. There's a certain quality to writing, plot, and character development that is essential to how the Pern functions as a creation. It seems as though every detail of the culture, geography, and character are so thought out as to have been breathed onto the page instead of written. Dragon Harper has none of these qualities. I think I could best describe it as bland and detached, which makes it practically the opposite of a good book.
I also seem to know Anne's writing style well too because what bothered me the most about Dragon Harper was that it was nothing like reading a Pern novel. The writing was completely different (in a bad way), and it didn't really feel like Pern was at the heart of the novel. This was more like a generic novel with bits of Pern thrown in. I wasn't drawn into the story as I usually am; I wasn't even very sympathetic towards the main character, Kindan.
At first, I thought that it would just take a while for the story to get moving; perhaps Todd's writing style is one that takes more time to build up to the major crisis. I kept thinking that until I finished the book before I realized that my speculations were wrong. Then I thought that perhaps I was just unhappy with the subject: a super-flu plague that kills off about 1/3 of the planet's population. That's depressing enough, and I don't particularly like depressing, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Todd's level of writing familiarity with Pern was what was getting on my nerves. He clearly knows the culture and reasoning behind the fictional world, but he's missing a level of involvement that is critical to making a Pern novel work. Perhaps he should have included one or two characters from previous novels to help make the connection better. If there was already a defined character he could build off of, it might have helped to make Dragon Harper more Pern-like.
It's difficult to explain why a book that has all of the elements of a Pern novel (dragons, harpers, Holds, Weyrs, etc.) just doesn't come through as genuine, but this is exactly why I don't think I'll read Dragon Harper again anytime soon. I kind of feel bad for Todd because he even had his mother (the woman who created the whole fantasy world of Pern in the first place) to collaborate with. I would have thought having her along would guarantee a better novel.
The story itself isn't too bad. Kindan, a young apprentice at the Harper Hall, is our hero. His goal in life is to become a journeyman harper so that he can fulfill his dream to become the harper at Benden Weyr, maybe even Impress a dragon while he's at it. Unfortunately, a plague starts circulating the planet at the wrong time, and he's forced to give up his dream in order to save the lives of those he loves. This is where Todd makes his most fatal mistake. He kills off a character that Kindan loves. In a Pern novel, no one important ever dies, or if they do, they're old when it happens. Personally, I really don't like it when major characters are killed off, so this added to my dislike of a book I already wasn't fond of. Still, the plague changes Kindan's life in good ways because he now has a future in the Harper Hall as a healer, or whatever he should choose to be.
The "epilogue" threw me off too. It consists of about 1/4 of a page and nothing happens. I'm not even sure what's going on in the ten lines on the page. I turned the page expected there to be more, and I found nothing. Was there supposed to be something else, and it didn't make the publishing deadline? This is something that in a second edition, I would hope that the McCafffreys add on a bit to make their vision clearer as to what happens to Kindan.
I recently bought another Pern book, written by Todd alone, and I'm very wary about reading it after reading and being disappointed by Dragon Harper. I'm going to take a break from Pern for a while, and maybe some mental distance will make it easier to read this other Todd novel. Here's hoping to a better grip on writing about a world he knows so well!
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