Dragonflight
Dragonriders of Pern #1
Anne McCaffrey
fantasy
4 stars
180 pages
Introduced to the world of Pern. Dragons are in symbiosis with men, to fight thread, a parasitic thing that falls every 200 to 400 years. It has been very long since last threadfall in this story and nobody believes it will come again. One dragonrider, F’lar, believes it will. He searches out a woman to be queen of the Weir for the next queen egg. Lessa gets it and ends up discovering that dragons can jump between times as well as distances. Not enough dragons to fight thread. So Lessa goes back 400+ years to get the last known large group of dragonriders. Works and saves Pern.
I gave this 4 stars because the story just grabbed me. The writing was definitely early McCaffrey [which isn’t a bad thing to be honest] but the idea was new at the time and the original trilogy, of which this is book 1, perfectly captures the wonder of dragons without all the associated crap of later novels.