#moreta: dragonlady of pern

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern Cover Art by Michael Whelan

[threadfall]

Now this is one I haven't seen before! (Scan taken from CayCayShay on Ebay.)

Things to Come was a Science Fiction Book Club leaflet/newsletter shoved into the backs of books tell people about their next big titles. It doesn't credit this illustrator, like most of them don't – if anyone knows who it might be, I'd love to be able to credit!

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[kihaku-gato]

A REALLY lucky Thrift haul today!

There were a LOT of gems at the thrift for books (I'll later make a separate post on those which I didn't buy cause GODDAMN some rarities were on the shelves!) but what I got is still damn good in itself;

From the one thrift I got Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel (it is the lowest rated book and the last book from the Earth's Children series but I've never read it and it would help complete the series collection) and Guide to the Flowering Plants and Ferns of Iceland by Hordur Kristinsson (do I need a book on a place I'll never go to? No. BUT I GOT IT ANYWAYS. I'm a sucker for ID/guide books that come with range/location maps).

From the second thrift I would've gotten the cute wooden carved cat first but said to msyelf "I'm only gonna get it if I find a good book here" AND HO BOY DID I EVER. Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel (I already own a newer print but its paperback, THIS one is an oldie hardcover!), and more importantly I also got Moreta Dragonlady of Pern by Anne McCaffrey!!!! So with those fortunes the wooden kitty came home with me too. Sis/mom said it is very much a knick knack that fits me.

Bonus is that since it's made of wood Alice can't obliterate it by knocking off the shelves like she would with a more fragile material.

[wizardarchives]

Moreta by Michael Whelan (1983) for Anne McCaffrey’s Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

The preliminary concepts for this piece as well:

[auntieoneandauntietwo]

To second other people, harper hall are definitely the most “normal” of all of the books. Least culty and most solid middle grade fantasy. (Also the least questionable content) And they’re a super nice intro to the world if the main series feels too info dumpy and world building y

I honestly never loved moreta but like. Might just be me.

people who have read the dragonriders of pern books in any real capacity:

which ones would you say are the best? least terrible?

I only read 1 and I don't remember what it was called or anyone's names. all I know is some servant girl bonded with a queen dragon and people kept insisting queens couldn't fly and she took multiple baths a day just because she could and yeah Idk. it was pretty boring.

I need more books to add to my reading list when I get done what I have so far.

Bonus points if they're already available on the web archive, but not necessary.

[emblazonet]

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD!! It's so good! This is 100% my favourite Pern book so far. The characters are all great. The setting felt alive and interesting. The stakes were fucking high. I knew Moreta was going to die, in the way you know Vanyel is going to die in The Last Herald-Mage trilogy, because we're going back in time to explore the life of a characters from an in-universe ballad, and it made me love her more.

It's also about a pandemic, but in a soothing way? Honestly it was SUCH a relief to read a story about people just fucking doing the work of Dealing With A Contagious Flu without much of the bullshittery we've all had to live through these past three years.

This got long, so more under the cut!

There are no psycho anti-vax cults in Pern. The small population scattered over a continent that's constantly being besieged by Thread does not, generally, have the luxury of either the greed we've gotten to witness IRL nor the misinformation campaigns. Characters that hoard are stolen from; characters who try to prevent vaccination are villains in the narrative and the good guys go into their territory to vaccinate—that's Moreta's final heroic moment! She dies, not from the disease but from exhaustion, to ensure everyone gets vaccinated to PREVENT A SECOND WAVE.

I expected to feel re-traumatized by the pandemic conflict. Instead, it felt healing to read about these characters. It felt affirming. It made me feel better about my choice to continue wearing a mask in public. It felt invigorating: ok, so my world isn't as sensible as Pern's, but it's still worth it to fight disease, to fight the depression and apathy—in short, it did exactly what a fantasy book is supposed to do. Inspire. I don't know that this will be everyone's take away, but it was mine.

This book gets so much right, I can't even believe this is the same author who wrote all those other Pern books I've read so far. (How did we jump from the crap of The White Dragon into this? HOW?) All these things:

Despite there being SO MANY characters, the book largely juggles its cast well, and while I often forgot names, the context usually helped me out. Every character actually felt unique and distinct and like they had different lives they were living.

Moreta and Alessan's relationship was so well done. You know it's not a romance that will go anywhere, so it feels precious when they snatch some time together. Also, Alessan is just an attractive dude character? Unlike any other of the male leads in a Pern book, Alessan appeals to me.

The relationship between Moreta and the older queen rider, Leri—UGH MY HEART. At the beginning of the book I was worried Moreta would have the 'not like other girls' vibe... I needn't worried. Leri as mentor, accomplice and friend is everything I could have asked for in a female friendship. And Moreta has other relationships and positive experiences with women, and it's so good, but what she has with Leri is so special.

The way the book builds this yearning for Moreta to be able to fly Orlith again, and then at the end she's with Leri's exhausted Holth, and they die away from their partners in the line of duty—I CRIED OK. It was so much. It was so good.

Only small bits of time travel, smart avoidance of paradoxes, thank you.

I was super invested in Moreta's healing of the Thread-damaged dragon wings. The whole process of healing dragons was super interesting!

Loved that Threadfall kept on happening throughout, it made the stakes even higher in the best way possible.

There were things I think could have been better:

I didn't enjoy Moreta's introduction and it made me feel like the book was gonna suck lol, she was arguing with Nesso and then talking about her body in a way that just felt dated and weird.

Everyone on Pern must have the same blood type I guess? Because they're just using extracted blood to make the vaccine, and the vaccine appears to have no ill effect. Honestly, the book had so much going on I'm pretty grateful it didn't go into Accurate Medical Science, but it did feel incredibly oversimplified.

Telgar Weyr's Weyrleader just sort of like decides everyone's not allowed into his territory and fuck you guys but I didn't really get a feel for that character at all or where he was coming from? So it undermined Moreta's end sacrifice a bit, because the ending felt rushed.

I really wanted Sh'gall to do something so egregiously annoying that someone yelled at him. Sh'gall was basically the comic relief though, I generally enjoyed how useless he was lol.

Overall? 11/10 and I REALLY hope the rest of the Pern books are this good! I'm going to pick back up in January with Nerilka's Story.

[hamstermastersamster]

As I often am when I'm rotating in The Bad Place, I'm drawn to old loves and nostalgia for comfort, which is why I'm currently rereading the Dragonriders of Pern series.

I've already made my peace with some of the more eyebrow-raising scenes in my childhood beloved books (Anne was a 2nd wave feminist in the 60s, what can I say), but I'm up to Moreta and, oh my god it hits so different after the pandemic. AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY.

Titular protagonist Moreta, dragonlady of Pern. Such a Pernese legend that they wrote ballads about her that would be sung for generations to come.

And only now do I somehow see that she's a fucking idiot.

Seriously! She's Fort Weyr's healer, would have become a Master Healer if she hadn't become a dragonrider first. But she touches a mysteriously dying runnerbeast without any caution or even washing her damn hands afterwards (something she later admits to herself she only did to impress her new boy toy Alessan).

THEN because she doesn't want to face the fact that she may be infected, she instead questions the judgement of the fucking Masterhealer of Pern in calling a quarantine and flits about interacting with everyone as if nothing bad could ever happen. Her whole justification for this is "dragonriders are healthy, we simply won't get sick". WHAT. I'M SORRY?! You're a HEALER?! Do you know ANYTHING?!

The Pern setting is a little dark ages in the sense that, despite this being far in humanity's future, Pern's population has effectively regressed and forgotten a lot of science (and gender equality . . .). But even so, we can't pretend the healers don't know enough to understand the basic dos and don'ts of serious illnesses.

We know this because there is one person besides the Masterhealer who takes the situation seriously. And that is Sh'gall - Fort Weyrleader. He is rightly anxious about the prospect of a pandemic, he responsibly social-distances himself from other people in the Weyr because he knows he may have been infected, and he furiously enforces the quarantine, destroying his already utter lack of popularity.

And everyone, including the narrative, take the absolute piss out of him for it. Oh, silly Sh'gall! Such a worrywort. So over the top. Talk about exaggerating the risk. What a whiny pissbaby, says Moreta internally in not so many words.

Even after his concerns prove true, nobody acknowledges it. It's just "Oh well, it's done now, Sh'gall. Deal with it," from Miss I'm-Such-A-Great-Healer-I-Spread-Pandemic-To-My-Entire-Weyr.

Lmao.

Well, Sh'gall, it is years too late but I see you now. The title of this book should actually be Sh'gall: Smartest Dragonrider of Pern.

Let's hope the rest of the book redeems Moreta because at the moment I cannot like her anymore xD

[doberbutts]

Book asks 1, 2, 5, 14?

Book you've reread the most times:

I think the technical correct answer is actually the NIV Bible but only because I went to a Mennonite school and read the thing in full at minimum once per year, plus sections for various classes and Bible memorization etc.

HOWEVER if we're talking books I read because I actually wanted to read them, the answer is that I reread my big Lord of the Rings trilogy copy so many times that it literally fell apart. And then I did it again. So now I have a copy for display and a copy for reading because I got tired of having to replace it on my bookshelf.

Top five books of all time:

Woof okay. Well obviously I am going to just group literally all of Tolkien's works together as Tolkienverse because otherwise that list will be all Tolkien and nothing else.

Storm Thief and The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray I will group together as one despite being very different books by the same author, if only because I read them back-to-back and both times went "WOW, I REALLY like this".

In Viriconium I read for a concept art class back when I was in college and again was left with a "WOW what a BOOK" by the end of it.

Similar to the Wooding books above; Forests of the Heart and Yarrow I also read back-to-back and similarly went "WOW this is AMAZING"

Moreta Dragonlady of Pern gets a mention because very rarely does a book move me to have a physical emotional reaction like this, but I was so caught up in Moreta's ride that I forgot the previous books in the series had told me how this story was going to end, and I hit that ending like a brick wall and literally had to put the book down for a little while because I couldn't see through my tears to continue reading. Only a small handful of books have made me cry like this and I knew the ending but it didn't matter and I sobbed for her anyway.

Where do you buy your books?

Recently I purchased my copies of the Wolf series by Jane Lindskold through thriftbooks. I have really no complaints about the service so once I'm done reading through the series I'll probably buy through them again. Usually I buy through secondhand shops and local owned places if I can, but for newly released or out of print books that can be difficult.

Do you ever mark/dog ear books you own?

Incredibly infrequently and usually with a copy that is in bad shape, for research purposes. I spent a long time teaching myself Elvish from Tolkien's works so I bought a secondary copy of various books in order to make the notes required to learn. Pretty sure I did the same to my aforementioned Bible but I've long since tossed that shit in the trash so I can't check it to verify.

[dragongirl-casca]

Ok this time I made it to page 4 of Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern before my forward progress was arrested

This time it was not Orlith acting like a dragon, or the revelation that Moreta and Orlith had been together for twenty years, but the description of Moreta:

She slipped into the dress now, smoothing it over rather too broad shoulders, over breasts firm rather than large, a waist that was trim, and buttocks flat from long hours of riding astride. The gown hid muscled thighs she sometimes resented, but they, too were the legacy of twenty Turns riding a dragon and little enough inconvenience for being a queen's rider.

Pretty lady 🥺 big strong

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern Cover Art by Michael Whelan

[threadfall]

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern (竜の貴婦人), published by Hayakawa Publishing as 2 volumes in 1991. Translation by Miki Yōko (幹遙子), cover art by Kijima Shun (木嶋俊).

I've put the images above so that Volume 1 is on the right and Volume 2 on the left, so you can see how the Red Star aligns on the cover. (Images sourced from Paisley Books on Ebay; here and here)

Dragonriders of Pern has been translated as パーンの竜騎士 (Pern).

[lady-phasma]

I know we have a lot of time ahead of us before season two and we're all getting antsy already so just like I wanted to give people OG Matt Smith content, here's some OG dragon content. This series is phenomenal and long enough to keep you occupied until mid-2023 maybe.

When I write in my fics that the rider and dragon have an emotional bond The Dragonriders of Pern series is 100% where I took that from. I started reading these in the 90s and they have stayed with me so much that I write some words as compounds like Anne McCaffery did: dragonflight (book 1 of the series below), dragonrider, dragonsong, etc.

Check out the Wikipedia page for the list of the books and the ebooks are pretty inexpensive on Amazon. I could talk about this series forever! So brilliant and beautiful.

[kihaku-gato]

So after some cross referencing with a bookstore online and what I already own; counting other authors and disincluding omnibus books (which there are at least 2-3), there are at least 25 books involving the Dragonriders of Pern universe. I own 16, so I still need 9 books.

Ones I still need are A Gift of Dragons, Dragon's Code, Dragon's Time, Dragonflight (have read but do not own), Dragongirl, Dragonquest (also have read but do not own), Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern (Also read but don't own), Sky Dragons, and The Dolphins of Pern (I'm sure I've read that one too despite not owning it).

Other books I've stumbled upon via online browsing that I didn't include in the tally are Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern, Dragonholder, and Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons, all three of which I'm not sure should count or that I should go after???

From what I can gather those three seem to be more about the Anne McCaffrey herself if not about how her series has influenced/inspired others. Would I enjoy them?? I really don't know.

[roseunspindle]

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

On of the better Pern books, and hey, seemed relevant for now because there is a horrible plague happening in it. So check it out. ^_^

[booklung]