| Re: Anything Anne
I must admit that Moreta is my favorite Pern book, as it stands alone. I really don't like the relationship between Lessa and F'lar, it's too much a case of taming the shrew. That's another romance cliché Anne's far too fond of: the strong independent woman, who is often quite temperamental as well, being tamed by a strong good man and becoming nearly docile. That describes the Rowan and Jeff, Lessa and F'lar and also to some extent for some of the time, Killashandra and Lars. Possibly Killashandra is the only female who can be promiscuous and get away with it, but then she lived several centuries and was made sterile by symbiosis with an alien life-form, so the usual true love scenario doesn't fit. Moreta is the way Anne originally intended Weyrwomen to be, discreet certainly but not necessarily in love with the man whose dragon won the mating flights. Most of the time Moreta had no time at all for Sh'gall. Look what happened to Kylara as something she has in store for manipulative women who do things for their own pleasure and who aren't the least interested in having a conventional family, even if they have five kids. Never mind Brekke who preferred being true to one man to the point she basically killed her dragon by not wanting to hear everything involved in the life of a rider and dealing with it.
AMC writes romance disguised as soft sci-fi. Let's face it, her science isn't really all that scientific and she'd chew you out for daring to call Pern fantasy - the dragons were created by humans not magic, ergo it's not fantasy, although I'm not sure I buy that argument altogether. That said, her romantic nature reflects in clichéd characters. |