Dragonflight (Dragonriders of Pern - Volume 1)

I happily find myself transported to the another world. A fantasy world views through the eyes of innocents, as each character is described with 'old world' charm. They occupy a world that contains a benevolent class structure and a enemy that unites them all.
Easy to read and a welcome escape from the cynical. I love all the Pern Books equally, Anne McCaffrey was a gifted writer and has provided me with so much enjoyment. I first found these books as a teenager and now several decades on, I have recently re-read them. The stories have withstood the test of time. Beautiful writing.

A good story. It was engaging, and had a definite ending. I felt things ended a bit too easily, given that there are several books in the series. I will withhold judgement until I read the next few of her books.

This review is for the MP3 CD unabridged version of Dragonflight put out by Blilliance Audio.

First, each MP3 file is a full chapter. And it is recorded at 96kbps, which for an audio book is great. I have ripped many an audiobook audio CD to MP3 at 48kbps, or at most 64kbps, and had a great copy. The sound depth with only one vocal and no music is shallow enough for this to work fine.

But the recording, while clear enough to understand, is poor. [This, as I have since discovered, for some reason is only present if played over speakers, when I use my iPod the recording doesn't reveal these problems.]

I first encountered the Dragon Books ( they were a chosen subject by a contestant on Mastermind, the BBC quiz) in the 1980's. I enjoyed their optimism, (everything works out in the end) and I'm enjoying them again. They are never going to be seen as the ultimate in writing skill (unlike say Joyce, Yeats, Wolf etc) but the stories more than make up for any possible lack in prose. I get tired of all the negativity and darkness in today's crop of fiction.

My husband recommended this, as he recalls it and its sequels as excellent reading. I'm not generally a fantasy fan, but I'm open trying different genres now an again. For such a highly rated (and recommended) book, I was fairly disappointed. The story was compelling enough to keep my interest but the characters were so cliched that it was tough to get past: The strong-willed, stubborn, waif-like, beautiful heroine instantly hates the handsome, muscled, bronzed stud of a hero who seems to be her perfect match in every way. Golly gee, will they EVER profess their love for each other?! Puh-lease.

And though McCaffrey's writing style is easy to read, she needed to break out her thesaurus to find another word for "grin" or its derivations. I swear, nearly every page has someone or another "grinning" - to distraction! I was also overly bothered by one inconsistency that I just couldn't let go of: when Lessa bathes at the Weyr, she washes her hair three times yet as soon as she emerges from the pool, it's dry enough to be floating with static electricity! Petty, I know, but the kind of thing that should have been caught by now.

Overall, I would say this is a nice, gentle YA novel. Terribly inventive, but character interactions - especially between Lessa and F'lar - are a little too pedestrian for my taste. Needless to say, I won't be bothering with the sequels.

A note on Kindle formatting: The formatting was very good though there were a number of typos - they didn't distract from the story too much.

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My husband recommended this, as he recalls it and its sequels as excellent reading. I'm not generally a fantasy fan, but I'm open trying different genres now an again. For such a highly rated (and recommended) book, I was fairly disappointed. The story was compelling enough to keep my interest but the characters were so cliched that it was tough to get past: The strong-willed, stubborn, waif-like, beautiful heroine instantly hates the handsome, muscled, bronzed stud of a hero who seems to be her perfect match in every way. Golly gee, will they EVER profess their love for each other?! Puh-lease.

And though McCaffrey's writing style is easy to read, she needed to break out her thesaurus to find another word for "grin" or its derivations. I swear, nearly every page has someone or another "grinning" - to distraction! I was also overly bothered by one inconsistency that I just couldn't let go of: when Lessa bathes at the Weyr, she washes her hair three times yet as soon as she emerges from the pool, it's dry enough to be floating with static electricity! Petty, I know, but the kind of thing that should have been caught by now.

Overall, I would say this is a nice, gentle YA novel. Terribly inventive, but character interactions - especially between Lessa and F'lar - are a little too pedestrian for my taste. Needless to say, I won't be bothering with the sequels.

A note on Kindle formatting: The formatting was very good though there were a number of typos - they didn't distract from the story too much.

If this review gave you information that was helpful, please feel free to click the YES button below!

I love the original series of these books so much that I wanted to collect them on my kindle to have them available any time. Unfortunately, I feel I wasted more than half the price I paid to get this version, because it has not been properly edited.

The misspellings, wrong words, and missing text have caused me to rate this book very low. If publishers want to put out kindle versions and expect us to pay for more than one, they need to do a better job of editing. The mistakes appear to me to smack of someone listening to a badly-read audio version, typing only what they hear, and failing to correct any typos, much less checking to see if they heard the words correctly or if the reader skipped over something!

I'm really disappointed, and will not likely purchase any more kindle versions of these wonderful books. I'd rather have something that actually resembles the original writings of the author.

The collectibility is a must-have for the die-hards of Pern out there! Its a small inkling comic that follows the book alright, and its interesting to see an interpretation of what the characters look like.

I have to say, seeing it and reading it caused a loss of the magic to me, but wuld never trade or sell this rare (and expensive) book!