Dragon Harper (2007) is the 21st book written in the Dragonriders of Pern
series. Chronologically it is set around the Third Pass, about 500 years after
landing.
Kindan is an apprentice harper at the Harper Hall but he is finding the
lessons very difficult and although he has his friends, Nonala, Kelsa and
Verilan, he also has enemies, such as the bully Vaxoram. Things begin to improve
for Kindan when he beats Vaxoram in a duel and Vaxoram becomes first his servant
and then gradually his trusted friend. Then Kindan impresses a fire-lizard and
becomes the proud owner of the magnicent Valla. At the hatching he meets
Koriana, daughter of Lord Holder Bemin of Fort Hold. She also impresses and she
and Kindan fall in love, but her parents disapprove and she has to return to
Fort Hold. Then a plague begins to spread across Pern, killing nearly everyone
infected.
Kindan and his friends search the harper records to see if they can find a
cure, but all they can find is mention of a similar plague over a hundred Turns
past. As the plague gets worse Kindan and Vaxoram are sent to Fort Hold to help
tend the sick. Kindan will be reunited with Koriana, but will she be free of the
plague, and will he be able to find a cure before more people die?
Author Biography
Anne McCaffrey was one of the world's leading science-fiction writers, and
won both the Hugo and Nebula awards as well as the Margaret A. Edwards' Lifetime
Achievement Literary Award. Born and raised in the US, although of Irish
extraction, she spent the last years of her life in Ireland, in the heart of the
Wicklow Mountains. She died in 2011 at the age of eighty-five. She is the
creator of the Dragons of Pern series.
Todd McCaffrey is the bestselling author of the Pern novels Dragonsblood and
Dragonheart, and the co-author, with his mother, Anne McCaffrey, of
Dragon’s Kin, Dragon’s Fire, and Dragon Harper. A computer engineer, he
currently lives in Los Angeles. Having grown up in Ireland with the epic of the
Dragonriders of Pern, he is burst-ing with ideas for new stories of that world,
its people, and its dragons.