As previously discussed, my first foray into Anne McCaffrey's Pern series was a couple of out-of-order volumes that I found alternately intriguing, boring, and creepy. About twenty years later, I made a second entry the way it should have been all along, with Dragonflight, the 1968 novel that started the series.

My impressions were as follow:

( Two positives, two negatives )

I read the Pern series only in part and badly out of order. A long time ago, and we're talking around two decades, I found Dragonsdawn and Dragonquest in a bookstore and read them one after the other. I found them a) to have some good ideas, b) boring in the execution, and b) skeevy as hell in places.

( Discussions of rape and reproductive coercion. )

Following on the discussion of the highly rapey Sky Maiden and Woodsman story, I looked through my niece's copy to see it for myself. It was just a standard telling, but there was a page at the end of the book talking about the "lessons" for children. I read it, wondering if it put the problematic elements of the story in perspective ( Read more... )

Trigger warning: Discussions of rape and abuse

My mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and sister-in-law's four-year-old daughter are visiting over the weekend. Just now I sat in my room listening to my mother-in-law reading her granddaughter what is, I now realize, a story of kidnap and rape. It's an old standby in Korean folk tales, The Sky Maiden and ( Read more... )