The 1980s had been very good to Anne McCaffrey. She had had successes not only with the Dragonriders novels, but with so many of her other books as well: by the end of that decade she had sold nearly fourteen million copies of her books. It didn’t hurt that Dragonsdawn explicitly stated that the Pern books were set in the same universe as many of her other novels. But after a decade of mostly exploring the history of Pern, McCaffrey went back to the “present” and let us know what had been happening since The White Dragon.
We learn about Thella, a woman who puts herself in exile when she is denied the rank she feels she deserves. We learn about Jayge Lilcamp, a trader who is a descendant of the original quartermaster of the Pern colony at Landing. We discover more about Aramina’s adventures since we last saw her in “The Girl Who Heard Dragons.” We learn more about what Piemur has been up to since Dragondrums. We learn more about Toric and his naked ambition for what he can exploit from the Southern Continent. And we also learn some more about what has been uncovered at Landing…
McCaffrey had also grown as a writer since The White Dragon and came back to her characters with a whole swath of new ideas and things to do to them. There’s a few changes to note about it all.
But first, I have to note a tiny issue I have with it.
First up, there’s a nice section that takes up a big chunk of the first half of the book in which we have our characters assembled and motivated for their roles. This is normally something that I love in a book of reasonable length (which Renegades definitely is) but it sometimes feels a little too quick and rote, as though McCaffrey was trying to get to the “good bits” and didn’t want to take too long over them – the scene in which we get Piemur and Sharra meeting for the first time is replayed here, just as it was in Dragondrums, but this time it’s told from Sharra’s perspective. However, it does seem to be over and done quite quickly, with a couple of notes indicating that Sharra isn’t quite taken in by our favourite drummer’s story. But we also get some extra details about Toric’s plans for expansion; his meeting with F’lar and Lessa at the start of The White Dragon is given an explanation here and his role as a vaguely amoral villain/tyrant is fleshed out and given some backdrop.
My issue is that we get quite a lengthy explanation about what has been happening since the start of Threadfall and how the plot of the other books has been playing out. While some of it is a bit repetitive for veteran readers, it is also quite a lot to take in for new readers – Jayge Lilcamp (who is clearly a descendant of a character from Dragonsdawn) has an tragic introduction to the new world order brought about by Thread when his family and family business is ruined by the parasitic spores and he is forced to take on manual work to earn his keep. He also has a negative experience with the Oldtimers (the Dragonriders brought forward in time by Lessa all the way back in Dragonflight) which sours him to them as well.
But this sometimes feels like filler, despite it giving us a glimpse into the lives of the less-privileged inhabitants of Pern and their lot.
Anyway, once we reach the events past our last adventure, the story proceeds to belt along, giving us new developments and new lore about Pernese society and the folks who live on it, who seem to be revitalised courtesy of a decade-long gap in which McCaffrey had been able to think about where she was taking her story and the characters in it.
And I must say, the interweaving between the earlier novels and this are frequently well done: the retelling of the events of “The Girl Who Heard Dragons” is really well done, being retold from the perspective of Thella rather than Aramina this time around. It makes it a bit grimmer and with higher stakes, and Thella is a great villain: her backstory – a lady holder who is passed over in a succession in favour of a more acceptable (male) candidate makes her a lot more sympathetic and believable as an antagonist.
It’s also nice to see K’van again: he re-plays his part in Aramina’s story and also has a major part in the story which is great.
I’m going to dwell on Aramina a little bit more because despite not being a point-of-view character, she undergoes some major developments of character here and shows that things aren’t always wonderful for those who live adjacent to the dragons and their riders on Pern.
Her experiences are traumatic to say the least in this book, and she goes from the wonderment of being able to hear the dragons as they speak and to have conversations with them to fearing the conversations in her head because of what it means to unscrupulous people like Thella who just wish to exploit her.
It’s fortunate that she is championed by somebody as loyal and driven as Jayge is, although a big chunk of his drive is revenge on Thella…
However, Aramina’s development, realistic though it is, does come back to bite her in a couple of books time, which means that I just might leave another point of discussion – her family’s importance to the newly-rediscovered sentient dolphins, because there is another storyline that has equal importance here…
… the excavations at Landing are continuing, with former Masterharper Robinton taking an increasing interest in the digging up of Pern’s past, as well as Piemur’s conflicted loyalty to Toric and the greater good of Pern. Fortunately, Piemur remembers that he is a Harper first and foremost
It also means that he is privy to the discovery of an ancient artefact that will change the lives of everyone on Pern…
Coming Up Next: “The Impression”
