Dragon's Kin (2003) is the 18th book written in the Dragonriders of Pern series, and the first with Todd McCaffrey as co-author. Chronologically it is set around the Third Pass, about 500 years after landing.
Young Kindan has no expectations other than joining his father in the mines
of Camp Natalon on Pern. Mining is fraught with danger, but fortunately the camp
has a watch-wher, a creature distantly related to dragons and uniquely suited to
specialized work in the dark, cold mineshafts.
Then disaster strikes, leaving Kindan orphaned and the camp without a
watch-wher. Grieving, Kindan is taken in by the camp's new Harper and finds a
measure of solace in a burgeoning musical talent . . . and in a new friendship
with the mysterious Nuella. It is Nuella who assists Kindan when he is selected
to hatch and train a new watch-wher, a job that forces him to give up his dream
of becoming a Harper; and it is Nuella who helps him give new meaning to
his life.
Meanwhile, long-simmering tensions are dividing the camp. As warring factions threaten to explode, Nuella and Kindan begin to discover hidden talents in the watch-wher – talents that could very well save an entire Hold and which show them that even a seemingly impossible dream is never completely out of reach …
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.
