Dragon’s Kin

Don’t be fooled by Anne McCaffrey’s name in huge letters across the top of the cover. This book, and the others in its sequence, show none of her excellence. The characters are shallow and forgettable–in fact, after struggling through three of the sequence books, I still find it hard to remember the name of the character who was central. The plots are amateurish. In fact, these books read more like mediocre fan fiction than professional novels.

A couple of the books in this series which I’ve tried to read also have the disconcerting flaw of beginning in the middle–as if the book is picking up right in the middle of a cliffhanger from the previous book. If you haven’t read that previous book, good luck figuring out anything substantive about how things got into the dire state they are in on page one.

If you want to read about the dragonrriders of Pern, read books by *Anne* McCaffrey. Don’t bother with the ones by *Todd* McCaffrey.

While keeping the reader on pins and needles throughout the entire book, Dragon’s Kin shows the reader some insights into the lives of the folk who support the most important group on PERN, the dragonriders. One would not expect miners of coal to be as important as the dragonriders themselves …. till you read this book. It shows the reader why the dragons would be useless without the miners to back them up. It also gives great insight into how important the smaller, ugly creatures related to the dragos are, who the miners need to help them in the mines. The book also gives great illustrations of not only what the actual jobs of the Harpers are on PERN, but also how they can spring from any and all crafts on the planet, just as the dragonriders do.

I liked the book, but it is very helpful to know the charterers before hand. The reading is a bit slow in the middle too. Some portions seem to be filler and don’t really move the story forward. It has got to be very difficult to follow in her mothers foot steps.

Written by Anne McCaffrey and her son Todd McCaffrey, Dragon’s Kin is set sixteen turns (years) before the third pass of the Red Star and with it the dreaded “Thread” that destroys anything living. It is the story of Kinden, Nuella, Zenor and two watch-whers (kin to dragons and fire lizards). They have to learn how to raise and train the watch-wher to help in the mines. All the while a group of greedy, resentful miners are cutting corners. When this comes to be known and an explosion accurs, the watch-wher has to save the day.

I liked the book. It is well written. I felt that the characters were believeable and I wanted to find out what happens to them next.

It was just okay. Not bad, not irritating, not fantastic. It seemed a much faster read than some of the others, and it was an original story…not one of her cheating re-told stories. However, it seemed a little stunted, the characters weren’t as developed, almost as if they were in a hurry to churn one out. That, and there weren’t enough dragons involved.

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