Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey

Dragonflight
Anne McCaffrey
Ballantine Books
Copyright: 1968
978-0345335463

The amazon.com blurb:

HOW CAN ONE GIRL SAVE AN ENTIRE WORLD?

To the nobles who live in Benden Weyr, Lessa is nothing but a ragged kitchen girl. For most of her life she has survived by serving those who betrayed her father and took over his lands. Now the time has come for Lessa to shed her disguise—and take back her stolen birthright.

But everything changes when she meets a queen dragon. The bond they share will be deep and last forever. It will protect them when, for the first time in centuries, Lessa’s world is threatened by Thread, an evil substance that falls like rain and destroys everything it touches. Dragons and their Riders once protected the planet from Thread, but there are very few of them left these days. Now brave Lessa must risk her life, and the life of her beloved dragon, to save her beautiful world. . . .

Dragonflight is the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy. The sequels are Dragonquest and The White Dragon, all three of which are gathered together in the Dragonriders of Pern omnibus edition.

To be honest, I was trying to read the whole trilogy - it's only the omnibus edition that I own, but I stalled out again on Dragonquest, even though I really enjoyed my re-read of Dragonflight and I want to re-read The White Dragon. I think it's something about the omnibus edition making me feel as though I have to read all three at once rather than take breaks for other books in between. So. I'm treating the three as separate books this time around.

My re-read was inspired by reading the book of tributes to Anne McCaffrey: Dragonwriter. As a result of that read, I was noticing a lot more of some of the elements of the story - especially the lyrics at the beginnings of each chapter as well as descriptive and character elements.

This is definitely a trilogy that's stood up well to the test of time, I have to say: the original copyright for Dragonflight is 1968 and there's nothing about it that feels dated almost fifty years later - at least not that I noticed. A couple of quirky things that contradict later canon, but I think you almost have to be looking for them to notice them though.

Despite my trouble at the moment with continuing on in my read to the next book, I definitely enjoyed re-reading Dragonflight and would recommend it easily.