Discussion Post - Skies of Pern
Jan. 12th, 2025 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalinara posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
i_read_whatSo I'm trying something new here.
Basically, inspired by some comments, I actually decided to sit down and read Skies of Pern. I'm about halfway through (I have to take a break to stream), but I intend to finish it by tonight.
Since it is nowhere near the next book in the lineup, but I'm really open to chatting about it, I thought I'd open this post.
Here's my controversial opinion that might alienate a lot of Pern fans:
So far, I am really enjoying this book. I would go so far as to say I am enjoying this book more than I've enjoyed pretty much any other Pern book that I've read as an adult.
Anyway, I get the impression that this might be an unpopular opinion. :-D That's okay! If you'd like, please feel free to hop in the comments to chat about it. Don't worry about spoilers. I won't look at the comment section myself until I finish the book, probably tonight! (I'm a fast reader!)
Edited: Finished! And full of opinions (which I am putting in the replies)!
Beware of Spoilers!
Basically, inspired by some comments, I actually decided to sit down and read Skies of Pern. I'm about halfway through (I have to take a break to stream), but I intend to finish it by tonight.
Since it is nowhere near the next book in the lineup, but I'm really open to chatting about it, I thought I'd open this post.
Here's my controversial opinion that might alienate a lot of Pern fans:
So far, I am really enjoying this book. I would go so far as to say I am enjoying this book more than I've enjoyed pretty much any other Pern book that I've read as an adult.
Anyway, I get the impression that this might be an unpopular opinion. :-D That's okay! If you'd like, please feel free to hop in the comments to chat about it. Don't worry about spoilers. I won't look at the comment section myself until I finish the book, probably tonight! (I'm a fast reader!)
Edited: Finished! And full of opinions (which I am putting in the replies)!
Beware of Spoilers!
Some Opinions - F'lessan
Date: 2025-01-13 02:34 pm (UTC)The mating flight thing is...still not great. But I kind of feel like, for the first time, the series is actually kinda-sorta acknowledging the fucked up parts. F'lessan does ask for consent (quite emphatically), but it's not really clear that she ever actually gives a clear and unequivocal yes. It's a high pressure situation, at the very least.
That said, the attempt is there. (I might even be willing to chalk it up to a writer who's a few decades out of date when it comes to discussions of consent.) And I really appreciated that F'lessan says something about not necessarily needing to orgasm when his dragon does, and that the dragonriders that were Tai's previous partners should have treated her better even with the mating issues going on.
I appreciate that it makes Jaxom look even worse in retrospect. (F'lar too, but I like F'lar.)
The injury/recovery section was pretty intense. As a h/c fan, I enjoyed it a lot. It's definitely a harsh fate in a lot of ways: there's no way F'lessan can stay wingleader. Golanth will never fly right again. It's probably the first time (except Lytol, pre series) that we really get to see such harsh consequences for a major character.
Well, maybe Brekke. But it's not like the narrative really gave her much after her loss. She went from having her own, pretty important subplot, to being the satellite to F'nor's Red Star idiocy. (And F'nor, conveniently, ends up completely fine and able to take up dragonriding again without issue - after a period of recovery.)
But I did like the focus on recovery, the way all the dragons worked together to get Golanth into a position to be able to fly, at least somewhat, and how F'lessan himself does have a substantial goal for his future.
It does seem decidedly unfair when compared to Jaxom, and how Jaxom gets everything handed to him with no hint of any kind of real effort. But it's also a better story to read. I'd read a sequel if there was one.
(I had the funny thought that it's a shame that Jaxom got Ruth before F'lessan got Golanth. I somehow doubt that Jaxom would have been anywhere near as gracious if F'lessan had gotten anything before he did. That said, of course, with a five year age difference that wasn't likely to happen.)
Some Opinions - Tai (and a tiny bit of Mirrim)
Date: 2025-01-13 02:44 pm (UTC)I thought the romance developed reasonably well, and I liked their interaction a lot. And while I did still have issues with the mating flight part itself, I appreciated how afterward, it was made clear that Tai has options and that her feelings and preferences matter. She's invited to stay with F'lessan, but it's not assumed she would or she has to. He asks rather than expects or demands, which is nice.
I also like that her plot works as a critique to the long-time treatment of green riders in general, particularly the implied sexual exploitation now overtly challenged.
I do side-eye a bit that this is only being expressly addressed now that there are female green riders. I also think it should be a little more notable that Tai is a female greenrider. She's not the first (I still don't get why Mirrim never got a book of her own), but they're still implicitly few and far between.
Honestly, I think the story would have worked just as well if Tai were a man instead of a woman. It might be a bit of a missed opportunity. (And a part of me kind of wonders if the story would work if I re-envisioned Tai as a trans woman. But I'm not sure I have the sensitivity or awareness to do that justice.)
I liked the use of Mirrim, by the way, which is funny, because she's pretty antagonistic/unlikeable at parts here. But I think that McCaffrey actually does a good job of making her REASONABLY unlikeable. Like, her assumption that Tai went back for her furs is reasonable! It's horrendously out of character for Tai to do that, but no one yet knows about dragon telekinesis, so she has no real way of understanding that Zaranth was the one who saved them or how.
The difference between Mirrim here and Mirrim in White Dragon is that I feel like there's some attempt to portray her as someone who has a consistent and logical point of view. She's not just there to be disliked.
I also liked that Zaranth gets to be the one to discover dragon telekinesis all on her own.
Some more General Miscellaneous Opinions:
Date: 2025-01-13 02:53 pm (UTC)That said, I do appreciate that the story spends a fair amount of time giving us Toric's point of view and he still has some of those great touches that I like. (Like in the Council meeting about appointing Janissian. Where the other conservative assholes try to fight about a woman Holder, Toric's just like "appoint her already, I want to get to the other ways I can be an obstructive dick.)
I also liked how a certain character's death at the end of ATWOP (being vague because my recaps having gotten that far yet), plays into at least some of the villainous motivations. The assumption that said character died because they discovered something nefarious about AIVAS is not completely unreasonable (especially given what happens to that one dude in THIS book).
I didn't notice a lot of major retcons here, but those are things I might need a more focused readthrough to find. (I did think it was weirdly inconsistent about when exactly a certain character died, but I might just need to read it again to clarify.) I did think it worked though as a kind of epilogue to the series. I'd happily read another book that's more about F'lessan adjusting to the changes in his life, but it's not really necessary. He'll survive and grow just like Pern will.