Author: Anne McCaffrey
Started: 18 Jun 2006
Finished: 21 Jun 2006
303p / 4d
76 p/d

Brandy recently read all of Anne McCaffrey’s dragon books after she ran out of books once and I pointed her at them. And so I was inspired to want to read them again for the first time in at least a decade. So, I decided to pick up the first of the bunch and read it again.

And of course, I basically couldn’t put it down. Well, of course I put it down. I went to work and stuff. I only read a couple chapters Sunday through Tuesday actually, but then early Wednesday, right around when I was supposed to be going to sleep for the night I picked up the book instead. And THEN I didn’t put it down until I was done several hours later. Leaving me quite tired during the day Wednesday after I dragged myself out of bed and to work. The 76 pages per day rate I averaged on this book is the fastest rate for anything I’ve read since I started posting books I read on this blog. Woo! Of course, in exchange, I didn’t do anything I was supposed to in the time between work and bed for a couple days (although this wasn’t the only reason) and I ended up only sleeping a couple hours one night, but hey, I wanted to read the book!

I was definitely reminded how much I like this series. And that is of course mainly because I want a dragon. I mean, who wouldn’t? I’d even settle for a fire lizard (although they were not in this book). A fire lizard would be quite fine.

I have read these much less often than I have read the Lord of the Rings, and it showed while I was reading it. There were certainly things that I remembered… but generally only a few pages before I got to them… I could not have told you the plot before I started reading it again. In fact, I would have claimed that this particular plot was actually the plot of one of the later books, not the first book, and would have been completely wrong. And even once reading it, I might remember general plot points, but not details. And that was nice. Not quite like reading something for the very first time, but still good. And like going back to an old friend. I am very tempted to just move right on to the next book in the series, but alas, there are other things ahead of it in line.

One more note… Brandy was reading many of the dragon books in the last few months of Princely’s life. A few times during those months she referred to him as “her dragon”. And that resonated while reading and added poignancy. I’ll never be able to read these books again without also thinking about Princely and shedding a tear or two. I miss him very much too.