Dragondrums: Volume Three of the Harper Hall Trilogy
by Anne McCaffrey
The Harper Hall books are less a trilogy and more a duology about Menolly and then a single book about Piemur, the young harper who was introduced as a side character in Dragonsinger. Piemur has a beautiful prepubescent voice... and Dragondrums opens with that voice breaking as Piemur goes through puberty, so now he needs to carve out a new space for himself at the Harper Hall.
Piemur is a fun character, but like Menolly in the previous two books suffers from the fact that he's pretty much great at everything he does. He has to transition into drumming... and wow, he's the best drummer in the history of drumming, and everyone hates him for it. Wouldn't it be more interesting if for once in his life he had to
work at something? There are lots of shenanigans here about the Old Timers on the Southern Continent, and Piemur works as a sort of spy to assist the interests of the northern weyrs and holds, but he pretty much adapts right away. Like Menolly in
Dragonsong, he ends up in a situation that seems like it
ought to be a struggle, when he's on his own in the south, but actually it's more like an extended vacation. Piemur was fun as a scampy side character in Menolly's story, but brought into focus, he has the exact same weaknesses as a protagonist as she does.
This is the third installment in a series of posts about the Pern novels. The next covers The Masterharper of Pern. Previous installments are listed below:
- Introduction
- Dragonsong / Dragonsinger
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