Rehashed dragons

Nerilka’s Story & The Coelura (The Dragon Books Book 8) by Anne McCaffrey

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Nerilkas’s Story (176 pages)

Nerilka is a minor character in the novel Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern. This is her story, running parallel to the story told in the main book. Same as Moreta, I read this once in the late 80s or 90s and it was not a favourite. I recommend reading Nerilka after Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, as it really feels like a companion novel and will make a lot more sense like that.

Nerilka tells her story in the first person and at the beginning is at times a fairly unemotional omnipresent narrator, as McCaffrey moves over the main points of the know plot from Moreta‘s book quite quickly. Some dialogue is even taken verbatim from that book, seen from a different point of view and narrator. By Chapter 6, around a third into this novel (novelette?) we finally start to cover more new ground.

Fairly simple, mostly a re-hash, too unemotional. It was ok, but if you are reading this series you can safely give this a pass. You won‘t miss much.

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Pern Re-read
I started a re-read of the series in 2020/2021 and plan to read all the available main novels that I have not read yet.
I am deleting, as I progress through the series, mostly in publication order. I am not too fussed about the order for the rereads, so I will diverge where it seems practical…

Publication Order — main novels / next
* 1989 – The Renegades of Pern
* 1991 – All The Weyrs of Pern
* 1994 – The Dolphins of Pern
* 1998 – The Masterharper of Pern
* 2001 – The Skies of Pern
* 2003 – Dragon’s Kin
* 2005 – Dragonsblood
* 2006 – Dragon’s Fire
* 2007 – Dragon Harper
* 2008 – Dragonheart
* 2010 – Dragongirl
* 2011 – Dragon’s Time
* 2012 – Sky Dragons

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The Coelura

This novelette is not related to the Dragonriders of Pern. No idea why it was combined with Nerilka‘s Story. I read the start, skimmed a little and read the ending. Not interested at the moment. Maybe I‘ll read it properly another time.