Review: Dragonflight (Dragonriders of Pern #1)

Author: Anne McCaffrey

Started reading: July 10th 2020

Finished the book: August 4th 2020

Pages: 299

Genres: Fantasy

Published: July 1968

Source: Bought the book

Goodreads score: 4.09

My score:

Synopsis

To the nobles who live in Benden Weyr, Lessa is nothing but a ragged kitchen girl. For most of her life she has survived by serving those who betrayed her father and took over his lands. Now the time has come for Lessa to shed her disguise—and take back her stolen birthright.

But everything changes when she meets a queen dragon. The bond they share will be deep and last forever. It will protect them when, for the first time in centuries, Lessa’s world is threatened by Thread, an evil substance that falls like rain and destroys everything it touches. Dragons and their Riders once protected the planet from Thread, but there are very few of them left these days. Now brave Lessa must risk her life, and the life of her beloved dragon, to save her beautiful world. . .

My thoughts

Thanks to Arjen for doing this buddyread with me. We were both excited to start this series, but it turned out it was not our favorite. I'm kinda scared to write this review, because I've been getting various comments on this series and they were all positive. So; Sorry for the fans, but I'm not the next new fan and will not continue this series.

Pros

• Charming: I always get a different feeling from books that are old, older than maybe 10 or 20 years. This book is originally from 1968 and you can tell. I love that you can. Older books always feel different to me, and that's in a good way. It just has something charming to me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm born in the right era...
• Interesting: The story took pretty long, in my opinion, to really get started. I was hooked, though, once the story really got going. I didn't feel like dragging myself through too much, and I was interested how the story would end. 

Cons

• Long chapters: I'm a reader that needs chapters and short ones at best. I can rush through a book when the chapters are quite short. I always tell myself; One more chapter... With this book, it only had 3 or 4 parts and they were so friggin' long. You never get that satisfied feeling of finishing yet another chapter.
• Characters: The characters really felt quite shallow, even though they did have some history. I would loved for them to have character traits that really shine through. Take Lessa, she is fierce and a bit stubborn, but except for that I can't really tell anything about things she loves to do or any other character traits. I also felt like some of the characters got mad pretty fast and that wasn't necessary either.
• Too long: I never thought that I would call a 299 page-long book too long, but I will now. I was interested in the story and quite curious how the book would end, but in my opinion it just took too long. The story was able to keep me interested but I did feel like; When is it going to happen?

Overall

Really sorry for all the die-hard fans out there, but this book was not a hit for me or my buddy. We called it quits after this one, because there are so many more good books to read. I'm sure that others will be able to totally immerse themselves in this world and story, but I wasn't able to do that. I'm not curious enough to see where the rest of the series will take us.

Memorable quotes from this book

"Dragon kind was no less cruel than mankind. The Dragon, at least, acted from bestial need rather than bestial greed."

Thanks for reading!

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