Can Piemur prevent a war that pits dragonrider against dragonrider?

What an awesome addition to the world of Pern! Gigi McCaffrey has done her mother proud! Menolly, Piemur, and Jaxom have been my favorite characters in all the Pern books. How wonderful to have a new Pern story starring Piemur with parts for our other favorite characters, although a few, such as Lessa and F’lar, are almost cameos. Dragon’s Code takes up where Piemur’s changing voice left off. He’s now a wandering journeyman mapping the southern continent and spying on the Oldtimers exiled there for Masterharper Robinton.

As usual, although more serious and mature than in the previous books he shares with Menolly, Piemur is in the thick of things. He manages to insert himself where he can hear the plotting of disgruntled Southern dragonriders as they plot a way to get themselves out of a dead-end exile, where their female dragons are too old to fly to mate and they and their dragons are ill from an unknown lung disease. They are depressed, angry, and ready for rebellion, their days of heroically traveling through four hundred years to save Pern a distant regret. They’re ready to do whatever it takes to be in power again, even if it means betraying other dragonriders. It will take all Piemur’s wit to save them, Sebell, and himself from the dangers and enemy plans afoot.

This books stands alone, even though incidents in the story originally occurred in other Pern books and this story explains what was happening behind the scenes that created those incidents, who the perpetrators were, and how everything turned out in the context of Pern as a whole, since the other books were limited by their POV.

If you love dragons, fantasy, or Anne McCaffrey’s Pern, you will love Dragon’s Code. Highly recommended.

I received this book as an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) through NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

I am sympathetic towards taking up the mantle of a science fiction great, up to an extent. The legacy Anne McCaffrey left behind is immense- one of the first women to write science fiction, she created a rich world that readers have returned to again and again. On a purely personal note, I have many fond memories of reading the books as I went from middle school to high school and then beyond, up until McCaffrey’s death. There are so many tales that could still be told using that framework already established, and unfortunately, Anne McCaffrey’s daughter Gigi fails to live up to that sense of keen teenage nostalgia I hold.

The most glaring issue was one of canon. I believe Gigi wanted to make her mother’s world her own, which is fair. Again, big shoes to fill etc etc. Unfortunately, in doing so, she completely neglects the established canon, something that established fans of the series aren’t going to be happy with. It’s not little changes either- it’s adding extra limbs to horses, it’s changing the titles that are used in dozens of books before. And it’s taking beloved characters and rendering them flat and two-dimensional, so unlike her mother’s creations.

It’s a shame, because the story Gigi wants to tell is one that has a great deal of potential. The Oldtimers have leapt forward from the past to rescue the world of Pern, only to find themselves lacking as strong of a purpose as they thought they would hold. Once regarded as the rescuers, they and their dragons are now fading into a kind of twilight obscurity and they aren’t content to live out their lives that way. Were the story to create entirely new characters, I may have been on board, despite Gigi McCaffrey’s clumsy prose and tendency to tell, and not show details in long-winded paragraphs that stretch on for what seems like pages and pages.

In taking Robinton and Piemur as significant characters, she’s taking perhaps two of the most beloved characters in the series and not doing them any sense of justice. As I said above, they’re flat, lacking everything that made them so memorable before. It almost feels disrespectful to Anne’s memory.

That being said, I’m willing to read another book by Gigi if she’s willing to write her own characters and if the editors are willing to make her stick to the canon. There’s potential there, but extracting the full degree of it may be a difficult process. Time will tell, and I can only hope that Pern still has some tales left in it.

Thank you to NetGalley and to RandomHouse for giving me a copy in exchange for an honest review.