Dragonriders of Pern Series

This series is about a planet called Pern, which is in a system called Rukbat, which is very very far away from Earth.  And, pretty far away from most anything else as well.  This is in the distant future where man has colonized the stars, and a group of people decided they've had enough of all the wars, and found the planet that is so secluded that no war could ever find them there.  This planet was Pern. 

What they failed to realize was that there was another planet in that system, a hostile planet, which had an erratic orbit which took it way out into the oort cloud for 200 years, and then for 50 years it would be near to Pern.  And, the thread, mindless life forms that will devour anything in its path, that it picked up in the oort cloud will descend on Pern for all of those 50 years causing chaos for the planet's inhabitants. 

Suffice it to say that the new colonists of Pern were soon plunged into an age of the distant past, somewhat similar to the Renaissance era, with no technology.  Then, fast forward to 2000 or so years later, and you have the main storyline, which follows Lessa at first, and then starts focusing on other friends of hers as well as the series progresses.

If you want to start from the beginning, from when the colonists first landed on Pern, then read "Dragonsdawn".  Otherwise, you can start out with "Dragonflight".

Sorry, I just realized that I was wrong about the chronicles of pern, first fall being the first chronological book in the series.  I started reading dragonsdawn and then realized that this was the one I read before and that I was going to read "Chronicles of Pern:  First Fall" but then found out that Dragonsdawn was really the first one so I decided to read that one instead.

This trilogy follows Menolly, who desperately wants to be a harper, the name given to the musicians of Pern.  But, her parents want her to stay at the hold and help them catch fish and prepare them for a living.  Her mother even stitched up a wound on her hand in such a way that she may never play an instrument again.  Menolly is an adventurous girl who also discovers something very important about the origins of the dragons on Pern.

The third book in this trilogy, like the previous one I talked about moved on to follow the life of a younger fellow in the harper hall named Piemur.  What kinds of mischief can he get himself into?  You'll just have to read and find out.

The third one, Dragondrums is also the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern series that I ever read.  And, as I never had anyone to recommend the series to me or tell me no this is the third book, I am telling you now, read this series and read them in order:  Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums.

They are "All the Weyrs of Pern", and "The Skies of Pern".  Ok, so I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but I will say that these are about the protagonist's final quest against the awful thread, and keeping the skies of Pern safe.

These books took me a while to read, because I entered a spell where I didn't really read much at all, but I hung on, and finally, yesterday I finished "The Skies of Pern".  They do start to find some of the technology that was lost when the colonists first came to Pern, and with that they come up against another foe, "the abominators", who wish to destroy all new technology and go back to the old way of living.

There are many more books in the series, like prequels, but I believe these are the latest chronological books in the series, unless Anne McCaffrey has been busy since I last checked.

Well, obviously I like the dragons, need I say more?  Well, I guess so, I like how each book has some kind of heroic act that one of the protagonists does.  I mean, a lot of books have that, right?  But, these were some of the books which provoked overwhelming emotion at times, because of such heroics.  I guess it's obvious that I like them since I bought them all.  I remember when I would love to go to the book store just so I could look for the Dragonriders of Pern books and maybe buy one of them.  I just kept doing this until I had them all.  I've actually started to read a lot more recently than I did since grade school, and I think I'll definitely get going on the rest of the Pern books that I haven't read yet.