few pages of prefatory backstory bring new and old readers of McCaffrey's famous Pern series up to speed for this new installment, the first in three years, and the first co-written with her son, who is also working on a solo novel in the saga, Dragonsblood. We learn that the world of Pern, populated by imported humans and native dragons and threatened by regular invasions of killing "Thread," is desperate for coal to use in the foundries that make essential iron goods needed for everyday living and defense. Our focus in this novel is the struggling mining village known as Natalon's Camp.
In this village lives 10-year-old Kindan, with his best friend Zenor. The boys have a fairly hard life, what with receiving lessons from the local Harper, Jofri, standing watch, running messages, helping peripherally at the mine, and other tasks. Additionally, Kindan's large family, where he is the youngest, lacks a mother, and Kindan's father is a somber, undemonstrative sort of parent. Kindan's older brothers enjoy picking on him as well. Two high points in Kindan's present life are his responsibility for the care and feeding of the village's only watch-wehr, Dask, who is cousin to the larger rider-carrying dragons; and the upcoming marriage of his sister, Silstra, where plenty of food and merriment will prevail.
The arrival of Silstra's out-of-town groom also brings a new Harper to replace Jofri, Master Zist. A more stern and older figure than his predecessor, Zist is soon to take Kindan under his wing as his ward when tragedy strikes. One day, both Kindan's and Zenor's fathers and Kindan's remaining underage brothers are killed in a mine collapse. Zenor is forced to abandon his studies and work in the mine to support his family, while Kindan, without any village relatives, goes to live with Zist. There he is well embarked on the route to becoming a Harper when Natalon decrees that Kindan must become a watch-wehr master, and raise a new dragon from an egg, to replace Dask, who also perished in the mine disaster.
Now Kindan's fate begins to become increasingly intertwined with that of another of his peers, a girl named Nuella. Natalon's blind daughter, Nuella has been literally a nonentity in the village, her very existence kept secret, for fear her blindness will be perceived as a curse on the Natalon family. But Nuella is getting itchy to emerge into daylight, and her strange talents will dovetail with Kindan's own development, and with the raising of the new watch-wehr.
A seamless saga from junior and senior
Readers expecting a fully "adult" installment of the Pern mythos will have to put aside their preconceptions. Despite any explicit marketing as such, this volume is undeniably a Young Adult novel. Now, not every book with juvenile protagonists is necessarily a YA book. A tale such as Heinlein's Starship Troopers (1959) arguably straddles the borderline. What marks a novel as YA is tone and theme and certain excluded subjects. Dragon's Kin is YA on all counts.
The tone of the book is innocent and a tad naive. For all the supposed roughness of the frontier mining-camp environment, there is no real brutality or realistic suffering evident. Kindan's life does not share the hardships and psychological depths of, say, Great Expectations (1861) by any means. An example of this prevalent 10-year-old's weltanschauung is the incident where Kindan's father, a work-hardened man of the world and village leader, actually blushes when someone asks an innocent question about his daughter's honeymoon. Despite some minor interplay about the haughtiness of dragon-riders and the demands of Zist's art, the novel's themes are not concerned with such adult issues of power and corruption, or aesthetic dilemmas. Instead, they are very much focused on making friends and gaining respect and freedom, typical YA issues. And the lack of any real romantic tension between Nuella and Kindan—even on a Harry Potter level—signals the McCaffreys' intentions.
Granted all this, the book is a fairly entertaining read. The everyday life of the village is nicely fleshed out with believable details (although I debate the practicality of using "fresh-cut branches of pine" for a fire, unless one wishes to produce nothing but smoke). The characters are all engaging. And the action flows smoothly, with a satisfying climax and a meaningful reversal of roles. However, the nearly 100 pages between the death of Dask and the arrival of the new dragon are almost indistinguishable from some mainstream novel about life in a Welsh mining village, without much fantastic allure.
McCaffrey senior and junior deserve credit for exploring niches of their invented world not dominated by dragon-riders and Thread. But next time they might put the spotlight on more mature protagonists.
