Thursday, September 9, 2010

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey



Fantasy

Dragonflight is the Science Fiction Book Club discussion book for September 2010. It is also Volume 1 of The Dragonriders of Pern series, a series that has become a classic in Science Fiction Fantasy. The person who recommended the book reread it before our July meeting and said we might want to replace it with another book as the story was not as good as he remembered. We decided to leave it in place and see what everyone else thought.

Like Stranger In a Strange Land, Dragonflight suffers because of the change in attitude about women’s place in the world. Lessa is the strong female character in the book but she is not treated as a strong female character is treated today. On the plus side for the book at least there was a strong female character. F’Lar, the lead male character in the book, never deals with Lessa as an equal. As a result much of the interaction between the two main characters does not stand the test of time.

The story in Dragonflight is still a good story but I had to work to keep some of the outdated elements from overriding my enjoyment of the book.

Del Ray published Dragonflight by Ann McCaffrey in 1968.

I checked Dragonflight out from the Rogers Public Library.

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