Letter from Rae
I’ve just started Dragonsblood and I’m a bit confused. In the first segment in the First Pass, you write M’hall as saying that watchwhers fight Thread at night– yet Anne has stated more than once that Thread never falls at night due to the orbits of Pern and the Red Star. Also, you write that watchwhers “eat Thread, like the fire-lizards”, when in all the books the firelizards flame Thread. I remember only one mention in a 9th pass book where Kylara says her firelizard “ate” Thread, and numerous mentions of their flaming it. They taught Ruth how to chew firestone, and the original seventeen dragonriders as well. I’m sure the rest of the book is fabulous (I really enjoyed Dragon’s Kin), but these discrepancies are more than a little off-putting. What’s the deal?
Hi Rae,
Actually Mum more often says that Thread freezes at night because it’s too cold, which is exactly what M’hall noticed and what happens. If you look at the sky charts so expertly produced by Harry Alm in Dragonsdawn, you’ll note that there is nothing precluding a night fall of Thread — in fact, it has to happen. Mum knows this, she’s not only spoken with Harry on the topic repeatedly, she’s used his Threadfall charts (as do I in Dragonsblood).
As for fire-lizards, you are right that Kylara first mentioned their ability to eat Thread — it was also the first mention in Mum’s books at all of the fire-lizards’ ability to deal with Thread. What happens when the fire-lizards can’t get the firestone needed to produce flame?
As for firelizards teaching Ruth how to chew firestone, my recollection is that it was Jaxom who taught Ruth how to chew firestone and the firelizards merely provided encouragement.
Not that this matters, as it was clearly established that fire-lizards *can* eat Thread.
You are definitely going to run across one and possibly two other eyebrow-raising revelations in Dragonsblood.
One is that Wind Blossom is Kitti Ping’s daughter, not her granddaughter — this was an error in the original US edition of Dragonsdawn, corrected in the UK edition. When one of my early readers noticed it, there was a loonnngg conversation finally ended with Mum’s observation, “I would never had gone to two generations, Wind Blossom *has* to be Kitti Ping’s daughter.”
The other is mention to “the Plague.” It’s not the Sixth Pass Plagues of Moreta’s time — of which my Third Pass people know nothing. It is the latest pandemic (worldwide epidemic) to ravage Pern, and it happened within the living memory of all in the Second Interval/Third Pass to survive it (chronologically, it happened about four Turns after the end of Dragon’s Kin).
Finally, Rae, and perhaps most reassuring to you, Mum and I corresponded on Dragonsblood while I was writing it. If I did anything that I thought might not work, I ran it by her first. In fact, Mum read and approved the original outline of the book, read the first draft of the book (and made numerous, extremely helpful comments), and read the advanced readers’ copy. There isn’t anything in Dragonsblood that Mum hasn’t approved — as she makes abundantly clear in her introduction to Dragonsblood.
Cheers,
Todd