Well, long, long, long after I intended to read this book, I've finally done it.

Man, why did I wait?

Masterharper of Pern might just be in contention for the best book in the Pern series. It's a strong book, anchored by a strong character, full of action and excitement and diplomacy and good humor and love and loss and all that good stuff.

But that's not what I came here to talk to you about. I came here to talk about the draft problem with series.

The problem with a series, or any large work, really, is getting into it. They're by definition long, so... it can be rough. Various series have different approaches to this, like "start wherever you like! I have some recommendations, but really, you can't go wrong!" (Discworld), "Suffer through the first 50000 chapters, I swear it gets good eventually" (Homestuck), and "If I tell you how to get started, another fan will immediately attack me and provide you with contradictory advice" (Fate).

Pern belongs in the second category, which is fairly common. Most series have installments that to some degree depend on what came before. So you have to be familiar with what did come before in order. This can still be overwhelming to newcomers, but Pern isn't that dense in its canon. It's... really not that bad. It's far from the crushing weight of the Homestuck canon.

But of course, there's another problem. That is that long-running series rarely put their best foots forward. It usually takes a few installments for the author to find their footing, and before that, the books tend to suffer from various issues, and generally be Weird in the context in future series. This is why Sir Pterry himself will tell you not to start with the first Discworld novel. Which, to be fair, isn't a bad book. But it's certainly not representative of the later novels, nor is it of quite the same quality. It's Not Quite There Yet. The same with The Dresden Files, but you have to read the first books first in that series. I mean, they're entertaining, but new readers are sometimes a little bit disappointed. Ah well. At least they probably enjoyed it.

The unique thing about Pern is that it probably has a worse start that any of the above. Part of that is just that Pern is Really Really Weird and new readers will have to come to understand that weirdness and get used to it. The whole series really does feel like it's a product of its time, but not in the same way that, say, Asimov does. It's utterly unique, which is part of what gives it its charm.

But... well, here was my first exposure to Pern: I opened to the first page of the first book, was choked on a barrage of overwrought description, and closed it again. This isn't reflective of later books in the series. This is Ann McCaffrey having not yet found her footing.

Dragonflight is not good. Okay, that's an oversimplification. The first third of Dragonflight is bad. The last third of Dragonflight is great. The middle is... in between. This is because Dragonflight is actually three novellas, and the first one was among McCaffrey's very first works. The jump in quality from the start to the end is so massive, but getting new readers over that initial hump is... rough, to say the least. I only did it because I had to, because I had to read Pern so I could write for the rest of you.

And even that great third isn't exactly representative. Pern still hasn't found its footing. It finally does... two books later, with the start of the Harper Hall trilogy. Which is a massive jump in quality from the very start as we go headlong into a run of books that are all-but-certainly the absolute best of Pern.

So in order to get into Pern, readers have to stomach a book that's half-bad and a second book that's only solid, before they can get into the really good stuff. Or they can just skip straight to the good stuff, and ruin the genuinely great parts of the those first two books that are really worthwhile.

This, to put it bluntly, sucks. And while the prequel books (which can't spoil anything, essentially) go a long way to help provide other entry points, they're still not exactly great entrypoints. Dragonsdawn kind of ruins a later book, and is radically different from pretty much all of the rest of Pern, and Dragonseye is a better introduction but still to weird, too early, and too different to quite feel right as a way of bringing in newcomers. Moreta's Ride might be better, but... my library didn't have that one. So I've never read it.

If only there was a way to bring people into Pern in a way that puts its best foot forward... If you're a Pern fan, I'm sure you see where I'm going with this, but let me explain.

In short, Masterharper of Pern might just be the best entrypoint into Pern for new readers. I can't say for sure, because I'm not a new reader, and it does implicitly expect some understanding of the setting. But I still strongly suspect that it's a better introduction than any other one I can think of. It's a prequel, but not a distant one: it ends just as the first novel in the city begins. And it's very, very good. It shows the central appeal of Pern, even if there aren't quite so many dragons in it (which, if you've read Pern, you may find aren't really the central focus or primary appeal--at least, I don't think they are. YMMV). In fact, it centers on what may just be one of the key elements of what makes Pern so great.

Robinton.

Masterharper Robinton is not in every Pern novel. He's in a lot of them. And he is an important, well-loved character (there are enough blatant-self-insert-romances-Robinton fanfics to keep both DMS and Despatch busy for a few weeks, and given the relative dearth of Pern fic, that's saying something). But in my opinion it goes further than that.

As I see it, Robinton is... well, he's the embodyment of what Pern aspires to. He's Pern's finest son by Pern's own admission (is there really a soul who doesn't like him?). His ideals are the ideals of the setting, those that are imbued into the very fabric of the world.

And so, to my mind, to love Robinton is to understand why you might love Pern.

So, despite having to suffer through maybe a few things that are inadequately explained, I think that if you want to get into Pern, you should probably give Masterharper a shot before jumping into Dragonflight. You might really like it. And it will definitely help show you what more there is to Pern than dragons.