The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

2018 First Read

This book is a ridiculous mix of absolutely nothing happening followed by spurts of ALL THE THINGS happening followed by more of nothing. The pace is ridiculous and it’s hard to get a good reading rhythm going. Not as good as Dragonflight and Dragonquest, which it’s lumped in with, but the boring parts are definitely worth pushing through to get to the more exciting bits.

2025 Reread

So, the thing about The White Dragon is: the pacing is all over the place. On this reread, I’m remembering why I DNF’d The White Dragon in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, the story is good and rewards reading, it’s just that it goes from an adventure to lots of talking to some more adventure to more talking to… you get the idea. And it’s not really until the last 100-or-so pages that the big, Pern-changing discoveries are made… but that would be telling. 🤫

Anyway… by far, the star of The White Dragon is the White Dragon himself: Ruth. Ruth really distinguishes himself over the course of the story, honestly showing more intelligence than even his parents. Ruth is also quite funny, at times. He’s indispensable as a fire lizard interpreter, too. There’s a constant worry about his sexuality, weirdly enough, that I found, well, really just weird. I guess for more sexual beings than myself, worrying about whether or not the “runt” dragon was ever going to mate is worthwhile, but… yeah. Felt weird to me.

I quite like Jaxom and “watching” him grow up. He and Sharra make a nice couple. I like her, too. She’s, I think, what I would have liked Mirrim to turn out like… which was a bit of a disappointment, to be honest. Mirrim’s descent into, basically a shrew personality-wise, wasn’t great. But hey, it takes all types to make a world.

So, yeah, The White Dragon is definitely worth the read, even if it admittedly took me a few tries to actually get through it. I will add that doing the reread was also a lot of waiting for things to happen. Just soldiering through the more boring parts to get to the fun or interesting parts. But definitely worth it. 

Random Continuity Error

So there's this whole part where people talk about Robinton not being able to sail... except that in The Masterharper of Pern, he does sail. Manages to keep him and his unmentioned wife afloat for the entirety of their sickness and the storm or whatever... but yeah, not mentioned in The White Dragon at all. Yay for publication retcons.