Dragonsong

Book Jacket

Series: Dragonriders of Pern [6]

Rating:

Tags: Fiction, General, Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9), Juvenile Fiction, Science Fiction; Fantasy; Magic, Science fiction, Fantasy, Pern (Imaginary place), Dragons, Fantasy & Magic, Legends; Myths; Fables, Science Fiction; Fantasy; & Magic, Legends; Myths; & Fables - Other, Fantasy (Young Adult), Other, Fairy Tales & Folklore, Children's Books - Young Adult Fiction

EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Every two hundred years or so, shimmering Threads fall from space, raining death and black ruin on Pern. The great dragons of Pern hurl themselves through the beleagured skies, flaming tongues of fire to destroy deadly Thread and save the Planet. But it was not Threadfall that made young Menolly unhappy. It was her father who betrayed her ambition to be a Harper, who thwarted her love of music. Menolly had no choice but to run away. When, suddenly, she came upon a group of fire lizards, wild and smaller relatives of the fire-breathing dragons, she let her music swirl around them. She taught nine of them to sing. Suddenly Menolly was no longer alone — she was Mistress of Music and Ward of the dazzling fire dragons.

Dragonsong

Anne McCaffrey

Foreword . 3

Table of Contents

Foreword. 3

Chapter 1. 5

Chapter 2. 11

Chapter 3. 20

Chapter 4. 28

Chapter 5. 38

Chapter 6. 45

Chapter 7. 51

Chapter 8. 56

Chapter 9. 63

Chapter 10. 72

Chapter 11. 84

Chapter 12. 88

Chapter 13. 94

Foreword

Rukbat, in the Sagittarian Sector, was a golden G-type star. It had five planets, two asteroid belts, and a stray planet it had attracted and held in recent millennia. When men first settled on Rukbat’s third world and called it Pern, they had taken little notice of the stranger planet, swinging about its adopted primary in a wildly erratic elliptical orbit. For two generations, the colonists gave the bright red star little thought, until the path of the wanderer brought it close to its stepsister at perihelion.

Then, the spore life, which proliferated at an incredible rate on the Red Star’s wild surface, spun off into space and bridged the gap to Pern. The spores fell as thin threads on the temperate, hospitable planet, and devoured anything organic in their way, seeking to establish burrows in Pern’s warm earth from which to set out more voracious Threads.

The colonists suffered staggering losses in terms of people scored to death, and in crops and vegetation wiped out completely. Only fire killed Thread on land: only stone and metal stopped its progress. Fortunately it drowned in water, but the colonists could scarcely live on the seas.