Anne McCaffrey - advice please

Hi, I want to start reading the Dragon Riders of Pern books by Anne McCaffrey (various people have recommended them to me over the years) but having looked her up online there seem to be millions of the bloody things! trilogies, additional books, prequels, sequels, short stories and all sorts.

So my question is to anyone who has read them, where should I start? Should I try to read them by publication date or is there a better way to approach them?

Any comments or advice would be appreciated :)

I read them in internal chronological order (except that The White Dragon was my entry point), without the later collaborations with or additions by the son, as that was what was out in french translation when I read them as a teen, worked for me.

My suggestion is:

Dragonsong
Dragonsinger
Dragon Drums

They lean toward YA and ease you into the world. I especially love the first two.

Then read:

Dragonflight
Dragonquest
The White Dragon

Agreed. Start with the Harper Hall trilogy then the Dragonrider trilogy. IMO many of the later books don't hold up quite as well.

Publication order works for me.

I would start with either of the sets mentioned by Morphy in #3. The Harper Hall books give more of a gentle entry, whereas the other three are stylistically more like the rest of the series. As far as the Pern timeline is concerned, both sets happen fairly concurrently.

And, I would suggest avoiding anything with Todd's name on the cover until you've run out of Anne's solo books.

Another vote for Harper Hall first, unless you are really averse to YA-ish books.

>3 Morphidae: - agreed.

>6 SylviaC: I agree.

I agree with Morphidae for starting out. After that I'd read them in publication order, which will keep you away from Todd's books as Sylvia suggested until your well along in the series.

I favor starting with the original trilogy instead of the Harper Hall trilogy, but I'm about as musical as a fence post and don't have nearly the fondness for the Harper Craft as most McCaffrey fans do.

The perk I find with reading in publication order is that then you get explore the world at the same pace the author did.

That's why I always read publication order. Original fans read them that way, and it just seems easier to do the same...

Hey!  I'm not the only one!   I started with Harper Hall, as well.  Technically, I started with The Smallest Dragonboy, which was a short story in a lit book in 7th grade, but everyone has their gateway.  My dad bought Dragonsong for me, that summer, and the trilogy has been my pick-me-up, ever since.

I would also recommend the Crystal Singer books, especially the first one. This one is a three book series that does need to be read in order.

It's one of my favorite non-Pern books.

Next I would say the Dinosaur Plant/Pirates books. But again in order.

I loved the books and I have no recollection of which I read first. I do agree that avoid the books her son worked on until you've run out of her books.

Thanks for all the replies people! I think as most of you have suggested I will start with Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums (I am still a big fan of YA literature despite being 28 now so I'm sure that won't put me off) and then if I like them I will start reading the rest in publication order.

I will probably post on here what I thought of them once I've read them if any one is interested at all :)

We're interested!

yup!

17:  I'm 27, and I still return to them.  Heck, I recently read and enjoyed Cress. ^_^

>17 KayEluned: I'm 55 and those three books are among those on my "I want to read something but can't get myself in the mood to read something new" list. IMO, after them, even if they don't quite catch your fancy, I'd read Dragonflight. The Harper books give a somewhat "limited" view of that world, while flight will give you a wider view of what the world is like.

>17 KayEluned: I agree with Morthy and the rest about order.

>21 rastaphrog: I'm there with you, turning 54 this summer. I still reread the Harper Hall and Dragonriders' trilogies every year or so.

The first two books of the Crystal Singer and Rowan series are good reads, too.

The other thing to be aware of is that the Harper Hall books contain references to events from the original trilogy, and the reader is expected to recognize and understand them with minimal or no explanation. It doesn't make a huge difference, but the context is a bit clearer if you've read the first three.

>23 Jim53: The first two books maybe but not the entire trilogy. The White Dragon wasn't written until after the first two Harper Halls at minimum. The last Harper Hall was written in the same year.

I read them horribly out of order: first Dragonsinger, then Dragonsong, then The White Dragon and THEN Dragonflight and Dragonquest. There were references to people I did not know, but after rereading them, I understood. ;)

I didn't mind being as ignorant as Menolly while reading Dragonsong. ^_^  Well, almost.  I had already read The Smallest Dragonboy.

Well, make sure that whichever trilogy you pick, read it in the correct order ;0)

I think my first was Dragonsinger which picked up Menolly's adventures about 5 minutes after events in the previous book had finished, so I was horribly confused all round as to people, places, happenings etc.

*sigh* One of the reasons I now check books before I pick them up, and go strictly by internal chronological order.

>27 humouress: My next conquest will be Witch World, but I have no idea which order to read it in.  I just need to run a wiki search, but just dealing with the books at work was a chore.  I spent a bunch of time trying to put the books in chronological order, and then someone came along behind me and alphabetized them. x_x

On second thought, I'll take suggestions on how to read these books.

>28 justjukka: Can this be right? From the Wikipedia Witch World article:

In the above, Witch World is a mirror image of Ursula Le Guin's "Earthsea" series, where to begin with magic is shown as male-dominated, with women's magic despised as "weak" and "wicked", and where it is assumed that "a mage who makes love thereby unmakes his power" - with both assumptions being increasingly challenged in later books of the series and shown be derived from prejudices of a conservative male hierarchy.

I didn't read the later books of the series but I don't remember anything disparaging about women's magic.

>29 jjwilson61: Maybe it was disparaging about men's magic, as they seem not to be practicioners early on ?

>28 justjukka: I haven't read Witch World for a while nor finished reading the entire series, but I think you do need to start with the first book, as the introduction to the universe, and probably read the ones with the Tregarth family in order. Other than that, you can probably mix and match, unless there are any others that are directly connected to each other.

My current personal project at the small club library where I volunteer is labelling any books in the children's section that are part of a series by series name and order (as well as all the other labels we have on them). That way I can put them back in the right order quite quickly, without having to pull the books off the shelf and open them up to hunt through them to try and work out what order they go in.

(I'm a bit miffed that I got sucked into buying Sea Glass by the interesting cover - which is the second book in the second series, but it doesn't say so. I did find the first series and borrow it from a library, and though I'm usually a completist, I don't want to add it to my overburdened shelves.)

I agree with the publication order folks.

I also loved Crystal Singer and The Ship Who Sang, The Rowan and Damia.

>29 jjwilson61: - watch the pronouns. The writer is unclear. It is EARTHSEA that has the 'weak as women's magic' based on a conservative male hierarchy, that is later shown not to be the case. Hence Witch World would be the reversal of that - a female hierarchy. I've not read them.

Earthsea does definitely start out male dominated, but by the time of Tales from Earthsea it is obviously changed. Well worth reading!

There's a new sci-fi imprint coming from Simon & Schuster next year. Along with new books, they are reissuing some older sci-fi books including the Harper Hall trilogy.

http://io9.com/take-an-exclusive-peek-at-the-most-anticipated-scifi-im-159161234...

Hopefully this will bring some new fans to Anne McCaffrey and Pern!

>30 Jarandel: >33 reading_fox: Sorry for being unclear. I was referring to not remembering seeing a disparaging of women's magic in EarthSea, at least in the first one.

I checked out the audiobook version of Dragonflight after seeing this thread, and I'm enjoying it. It seems that there are audiobook versions for most of the series.

I read a most of the series when I was younger, but I just read Moreta and Nerilka last year for the first time and really enjoyed them. I went to Dragonseye/Red Star Rising after that, and absolutely cannot recommend it, though I had remembered liking it all right before- it's like a particularly bad romance novel, with a young Weyrleader and an older Weyrwoman who desperately wants to be put in her place and submit to his authority. (Paraphrasing of actual cringe-worthy dialogue between the two of them.)

>34 tottman: The new covers aren't bad, but I'm uncertain about short-haired Menolly on the cover- she looks more like Alanna. There's also the scale of the firelizards- I think that if the one on new Dragonsinger tried to perch on someone it would probably cause grievous injury, for instance... I'm curious if there will be new Pern books- I haven't read any of the collaborations or solos by her son, but I've not heard terribly good things about them.

>35 jjwilson61: I recently tried to reread A Wizard of Earthsea, and put it down because of this. I think it comes up early on when there's a witch/sorceress who teaches/uses Ged that there's a saying "weak is women's magic, wicked is women's magic." I could have dealt with it if the narrative didn't bear it out by having her be indeed weak and wicked, though I'll probably pick it up again eventually when I'm in a more forgiving mood.

>35 jjwilson61: >36 sandstone78: It's there but I didn't find it that prominent, there's the saying but the men are shown to be just as fallible in their own ways, and women while disregarded and less showy about it... just do their things. And Tenar in book #2 is eventually anything but weak.

RE: Witch World / Earthsea – I'll do my best to read Witch World in publication order.  There are just so many that it seems to be a bit of a challenge, though not so boggling as Xanth.  As for the male/female hierarchy, I have a feeling that the disparaging regard for women (in Earthsea) was part of the civil rights movement.  Basically, if you agree with the opening statements regarding women's magic, prepare to be subverted; if it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, it should.  Le Guin was also subversive in the fact that her main character, while male, was not white.

McCaffrey has her way with subversion in The Masterharper of Pern, wherein Robinton is growing up.  It shouldn't spoil the story for anyone to know that his father was not interested in his upbringing, and McCaffrey justifies this while writing from the father's point of view.  It's one of my favorite parts of the book, because it can tell you so much about the reader.  Will the reader interpret this as a belief of the author, the natural order of things, or as a social criticism?