I was just re-reading Anne’s delightful duo: Dragonsong and Dragonsinger. It’s easy to forget how much you love a book until you slip back between its covers and rediscover the characters and the world.
On the planet Pern, deadly Threads periodically fall from the skies, searing all life they touch. Only the great fire-breathing dragons can destroy the alien life-forms before they reach the surface. Ordinary people look up to the Weyrs to protect them and teach their children to properly respect the dragon riders.
One such child is Menolly, a teenaged musical prodigy in a family of stolid fishermen. She’s been allowed to learn from the Hold’s elderly harper, mostly because he insisted and partly because her parents thought it proper that someone cared for the old fellow in his dottage.
Once the old harper dies, Menolly is expected to give up music and grow up into a proper hold worker. Unable to live with this future, she runs away from home and hold, living in a cave along the shore where she is protected from Threadfall.
One unexpected aspect of her new life is the friendship she forms with a fair of fire lizards, tiny cousins of the great dragons. She accidentally impresses nine of the lizards by feeding them as they hatch, and spends so much of her time caring for her new friends that she hasn’t time to become homesick or fearful of living hold-less.
Unbenownst to Menolly, the Masterharper has been seeking old Petiron’s missing apprentice, who he (and every other harper) believes is a young lad. A series of fantastic adventures await Menolly as her destiny draws her closer and closer to the Masterharper.
The second book in the series deals with Menolly’s adjustments to Harper Hall and the life of a professional musician. Though her life is no longer in danger as it was while she lived hold-less, she nevertheless has many lessons to learn before she’s ready to become a harper.
Anne McCaffrey was a master storyteller. I enjoy all of her Pern books, but these two have a special place in my heart.
Read Dragonsong and Dragonsinger for yourselves.
