Since going on Winter Break, I've been doing a lot of reading. During the semester, I simply do not have the time to read. (I don't exactly have the time to do many of the necessary things for living, like eating and sleeping, never mind reading!) Since coming home, I have read seven books, and am making my way through the eighth book. I happen to e obsessed with Dragons, and am constantly in search of more books with dragons. In conducting a google search for books with dragons, I discovered the New York Bestselling Author Anne McCaffrey. She has quickly become my new favorite. While waiting for the first book of the Dragonriders of Pern series to come inter library loan, I started reading her books about Acorna. Scifi/fantasy is totally my favorite genre, and I loved the new worlds and the concepts she created in her books. Well, the long awaited call from the library finally came, telling me that the first book of the dragonriders series was in! I had to finish the book I was in the middle of first, then at about 3 yesterday afternoon, I was finally able to start my new dragon series.
Once I started the book (DragonFlight), I knew immediately that it was going to be good. As proof of just how the good was-- I read straight through the book with only a pause for supper, staying up until 2:30 AM to finish it! Soooo good! only problem is.... the second book has not arrived at the library yet :( I don't want to turn this into a review of books, but I just have to rave a little bit about some of the things that make this book so great.
One thing I've come to love about Anne McCaffrey is her ability to create completely new worlds and pull you into them. With her Acorna books, everything is space oriented, set in a time when the Earth age is long past, there is much space travel and many planets in different galaxies are now inhabited. She brilliantly makes you believe in the possibility of a human existence throughout all of space. The really captivating aspect for me is how she brings in an alien life-form (Acorna), and develops that character in the midst of what had been an otherwise completely human universe. I love being able to explore the new worlds through the characters, and I can easily place myself right there with them, rather than just sitting sceptically in my chair, conscious of the fact that I am just reading a book. But anyway, on to the DragonRiders series:
The world Anne McCaffrey creates in this series is a mainly human population, though takes place in another world, another existence, no Earth or anything of that sort. And there are Dragons!!! All sorts of amazing things always happen when there are dragons around! No matter what author's works you read, if they include dragons, there will be amazingness in some form or another. A uniform theme in all the dragon works I've read is the concept of a mental connection with the dragons, and the ability to speak with your mind. Quite often, that concept is accompanied by the idea that one can extend their mind, their awareness, to others around them. I absolutely love the idea that someone can reach out with their mind, with the consciousness, and brush against the minds of others, against physical objects around them and farther away from them, touch the minds of all other living things, and just be aware of what may be going on beyond their physical sight. It is such an extraordinary concept, and I am always left longing to be able to extend my mind that way, and be able to just show others what is in my mind, rather than struggling to find the words to ineffectually explain.
Another thing I love about this book is Anne McCaffrey's ability to effectively pull off time travel. In most movies or books that include some aspect of time travel, there is usually the uncomfortable, realistic thought that no, that couldn't really happen... if they went back and did this, that would change this, and then that wouldn't have happened, but it already did..... and it just doesn't work.... they can't change the past, if they did that, there'd be all these consequences..... ahhhhh! But there is no worry of any such thing in this book. The author very carefully set things up so that after the time travel had occurred, you realized that according to what had happened earlier, the backwards time traveling has to happen in order to bring about what had already happened in the past. There is a point towards the end of the book that things suddenly click. You realize that an occurrence discussed now and then from much earlier history of this world only happened because of the time traveling that had to then occur right then in the present time in the world. I could not believe how brilliantly she worked everything out, not missing a single thing or leaving any opportunities for you to say wait... what about..... She even addressed the issue of what happens when you exist in two different times at once. (Like when your present day self goes back ten years to when you were a much younger person, so you exist in that one time as both your younger and your older self.)
As much as I have already enjoyed her other series, her dragon books have now blown my mind, and I cannot wait to read more! Dragon lore is truly the most marvellous material, and I will never get enough of it! :)
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