The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern by Jody Lynn Nye

For any nerd who loves Pern and wants to know more about it in detail, The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern is the book for you. Do be warned, if you haven’t read through the series, there are spoilers for pretty much all of it in these pages. It also does read mostly like a text-book, so be aware of that.

I vaguely remember a bunch of info from this book, so I must have read it, or one of the other text-book-like Pern books when I was in college (that’s when I last tried to read a bunch of Pern books). I really liked a good number of the illustrations, especially those of specifically Pernese origin.

The main reason I’m reading this book ( ya know, other than loving Pern) is to review the short story, “Impression.” So here’s that:

A very sweet story. Really hammers home how Impression feels. F’lessan and Golanth are adorable. I kind of liked the little detail about the Candidates being barefoot during the Hatching. Little weird, but a bit of world-building I’d never even thought about. I also appreciate the description of Golanth’s hide.

My notes:

• The ships look quite interesting, based on the drawing of the Yokohama. Not at all what I ever pictured.
• Crawlers give me distinct alien vibes, though I cannot for the life of me remember the particular alien I’m remembering.
• Wherries remind me of gryphons.
• The grubs honestly look very silly… and not like any grubs I imagined. Too furry.
• This Wher illustration honestly looks like a very muscly man in a suit.
• I found the “Training and Fighting Dragons” chapter really neat. Todd Johnson/McCaffrey’s writing style is really on show here.
• Robinton’s retconned wife is not mentioned in the blurb about him… or rather, it’s said he never married.
• Harper sand-tables are neat!
• Well that’s a lovely little paragraph… “The Healercraft doesn’t have the technology to sustain defective humans. After twenty-five centuries on Pern, the race has been bred clean of most defects.” Uhm… gross.
• I like the little biographies/stories we get about rando Pernese people throughout this book. Makes the world feel more complete and lived-in.
• Wow, let’s pretty much word-for-word repeat how the buildings at Landing looked not even a whole page later…
• If you are ever interested in just how much information authors have about their worlds that will probably never make it into the books, I beg you to take a look at the list of Dragons and their Riders contained in this book. It’s a lot.