caitri | A Book a Day: Dragonflight

Every day I'm posting an image of a book I like. I mainlined the Pern series when I was in middle school. By the sequels of the 90s, however, the series was in diminishing returns, with backstories to beloved characters that we not only didn't need but made beloved characters into jackasses (yes, I'm thinking of Masterharper of Pern. Bleh.). The early stuff though--that stuff is great.

* But boy does the series age poorly. Pretty much all of the sex in the books revolves around people being telepathically connected to dragons that periodically go into mating heat, and when dragons do it, humans gotta do it. Apparently. That means all the heterosex is basically dubcon, and background not-really-subtext is an awful lot of dragonriders who are literally forced to go gay because there's only guys around most of the time. Made even more brainfrying because McCaffrey apparently genuinely believed that was how gayness worked, and when people tried to tell her otherwise at cons she was like "lol no every gay person I know was forced into it" and people were like "WTF NO WHAT WHAT" and she was like "lol yeah so that's just how it works."

ANYHOW. Aside from the squicky sex--which I wanted to write an article on years ago but never got around to it--the telepathic dragons and also the time travel is good shit.