Dragonflight

Rereading the Pern series as an adult, it's both surprisingly feminist and a little bit rapey. :/

But I like that Lessa isn't that relatable. I like that she's angry, that she's traumatized, that she makes mistakes – that she's flawed. I like that her relationship with F'lar is complex, even if the ways it's complex seem unhealthy. I like that she's allowed – both by the story and by the author – to be a hero. Even if that's undermined in a lot of ways.

I don't even begin to understand Pern's weird gender issues, but in some ways the entire setting feels to me now like an allegory for the male-dominated SF world in which McCaffrey was writing. The dragonriders, hyper-masculine as they are, seem almost to be caricaturing traditional, Golden Age SF, and I find it very interesting that thus far (Dragonflight and the Harper Hall trilogy), McCaffrey's Strong Female Characters have all been invested in, to some extent, overthrowing those patriarchal traditions in order to make the place in the world where they belong, where they can follow their passions.

What's not so good is the way in which both Menolly and Lessa are set up as extraordinary, as “not like other women”. But, hey, this book was written in 1968.