Denver Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club

I'm not a great fan of the Pern series, but Dragonsong and Dragonsinger work a little better for me than most.  Because they are targeted at young adults, McCaffrey stays focused on her sympathetic and humble protagonist Menolly, with a fairly small supporting cast, instead of jumping back and forth between too many interchangeable characters as she tends to do in her other Pern books.  At times, watching Menolly cower like an abused puppy gets tiresome, but the scenes when she finally realizes her own abilities (for instance, her first performance in a quartet with trained musicians) work very well.  I don't see that Menolly's parents needed to be quite so despicable, but that's a minor quibble.  Overall I enjoyed these books, even though they suffer in comparison to Orson Scott Card's "Unaccompanied Sonata," a far more powerful look at a talented musician forbidden to play music.

As an aside, sometimes I can nearly suspend disbelief in Pern, but in these books it struck me as preposterous that McCaffrey even attempts to present the story as science fiction.  The story rings of fantasy from start to finish, and McCaffrey is clearly not comfortable with the most basic principles of science - the Law of Conservation of Mass, for instance, which tells us that eggs don't get heavier as they near hatching.