About the Author

Anne McCaffrey, one of the world’s most popular authors, is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern® series. She was the first woman to win the two top prizes for science fiction writing, the Hugo and Nebula awards. She was also given the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in Young Adult Fiction, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and was named a Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula Grand Master. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1926, McCaffrey relocated to Ireland in the 1970s, where she lived in a house of her own design, named Dragonhold-Underhill. She died in 2011.

Reviews

“SUPERB STORYTELLING AND ENGAGING CHARACTERS . . .McCaffrey’s most popular series takes on a new dimension with the latest installment, as familiar characters feel the weight of their years, giving way to a new generation of humans and their dragon companions.”
–Library Journal (starred review)

“The continuing evolution of this world is carefully handled and always fascinating. . . . Multifaceted as the eyes of their dragons, these novels offer romance, adventure, medieval pageantry, intrigue . . . [and] a satisfyingly complex society. In The Skies of Pern, McCaffrey serves up a buffet which can satisfy virtually anyone who steps up to its table.”
–SciFi Weekly

Bestseller McCaffrey's first Pern novel in three years returns to the world of her most popular series, Dragonriders of Pern, reprising almost all the best-loved Pernese characters. In earlier episodes, hero and heroine F'lar and Lessa summoned the captivating dragons and their riders from the remote past to save Pern from a devastating rain of Thread, while the later discovery of Aivas, the artificial intelligence that guided Pern's original human settlers, brought technological marvels like printing to Pern and helped shift the Thread-producing Red Star from its lethal orbit before it self-destructed. Now neo-Luddite Abominators are bent on destroying all of Aivas's gifts and returning watery Pern to its primitive state, while the Dragonriders struggle to find new purpose in a Threadless world. F'lar and Lessa uneasily contemplate second careers or horrors! retirement, while their genteel and amorous son F'lessan and perceptive green rider Tai arrive at both a dragon-assisted romance and a whole new role for the telepathic and telekinetic dragons. McCaffrey's various themes traditionalism vs. technology, the necessity of societal change, feminist commentary on draconian psychology are at times awkwardly integrated. And her slightly watered-down villains seem peripheral to the action, merely a means to showcase familiar personalities performing during crises. Nonetheless, as all her Pern novels amply demonstrate, McCaffrey's sexy and cunning dragons carry the day and the novel with impeccable, irresistible panache. (Apr. 3) Forecast: A likely genre bestseller, but some younger Pern fans may be put off by the emphasis on retirement, unable to appreciate the angst of inexorably approaching age. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

"SUPERB STORYTELLING AND ENGAGING CHARACTERS . . .McCaffrey's most popular series takes on a new dimension with the latest installment, as familiar characters feel the weight of their years, giving way to a new generation of humans and their dragon companions."
-Library Journal (starred review)

"The continuing evolution of this world is carefully handled and always fascinating. . . . Multifaceted as the eyes of their dragons, these novels offer romance, adventure, medieval pageantry, intrigue . . . [and] a satisfyingly complex society. In The Skies of Pern, McCaffrey serves up a buffet which can satisfy virtually anyone who steps up to its table."
-SciFi Weekly