Dragonsinger

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

A comfort reread of a childhood favorite. I always loved to imagine myself into Menolly's place, studying music, making friends and enjoying the company of tiny dragonlike creatures on a variation of the usual vaguely medieval fantasy world. Right now it provided some welcome escape.

Something that I found extremely compelling in this book was the portrayal of the intellectually disabled adult character Camo. This book was published in the 1970s, so there is some outdated and offensive language describing him (e.g. “half-wit”), but overall, the narrative shows great empathy for Camo. Though he is partially nonverbal, the narrative clearly expresses that he has his own thoughts and feelings. It is refreshing to have disabled characters present in non-issue novels. Disabled people are a part of every community on Earth, so there's no reason why they wouldn't be integrated into the communities of Pern.

Okay so I have a new theory about the Pern books, and it's that if you sorted them by the number of times a dude gives a woman “a little shake” from none to TOO MANY, you would have a list of the books in decreasing order of quality.

Dragonsong: definitely 0
Dragonsinger: ONE

other Pern books: I'm not gonna go back and count, but see previous reviews:
Dragonflight
Dragonquest
The White Dragon