Author: Todd McCaffrey

Pern AL 50: the geneticist Wind Blossom is nearing the end of her long life and is painfully aware that the colonists are running out of the modern technology the settlers brought with them to Pern and that they are forgetting how to use what they do have. Society is beginning to revert to a feudal system and Wind Blossom is concerned that future generations may be hit by an illness they have no tools to fight and that mankind may subsequently be wiped off the face of Pern AL 507: Lorana is training to be an animal healer but when she arrives at Benden Weyr she impresses a golden dragon and becomes a dragonrider. However, a deadly and mysterious plague begins to wipe out the dragons, leaving mankind no defence against the deadly Thread which has just begun to fall. Lorana has two firelizards who manage to travel Back in time to Wind Blossom's era. Wind Blossom discovers what is wrong with the dragons and comes up with a cure. She also devises a way to leave clues for Lorana so that she can discover the cure in her time and save the dragons, and thus the future of mankind on Pern.

This is the first Pern novel completely written by someone other than Anne McCaffrey. But it's still in the family - written by her son Todd, who previously co-authored "Dragon's Kin". It captures the feel of Pern extremely well, and most of the time you wouldn't know that it wasn't written by the original author of the series.

I've always found the Pern series to be a little awkward when bringing in the science in "science fiction" to explain the fantastical elements of dragons flying, thread falling etc. Even though I've always enjoyed finding out how exactly the fire-dragons were genetically engineered to become the dragons, and the story behind the origins of the society on this planet, the combination of the "science" and "fantasy" can sit rather uneasily with me, as if it's not sure what kind of story it wants to be.

This is more so in "Dragon's Kin" than any other book in the series, as the story relates to finding a cure for a plague, which involves a lot of scientific exploration. I enjoyed reading the hard science of genetics and biology set in the earlier era of the story, but at times it felt like the book was a series of lectures interspersed with a story. And those lectures were where it felt least like a "Pern" story.

I also experienced one of the common problems of novels which are mostly two threads (haha!) interspersed - I often found one storyline more interesting than the other, and therefore hurried through some sections of the book to get to the more interesting parts.

Despite these misgivings, "Dragon's Kin" was an enjoyable read, and a worthwhile addition to the Pern series.