{"id":4540,"date":"2013-03-28T18:10:23","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T23:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=4540"},"modified":"2013-03-28T18:10:23","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T23:10:23","slug":"anne-mccaffrey-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2013\/03\/28\/anne-mccaffrey-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Anne McCaffrey again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nTom Spurgeon links to my review of <cite>Dragonquest<\/cite> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreporter.com\/index.php\/random_comics_news_story_round_up032813\/\">expands on it<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nI think he&#8217;s right, but I actually think he undersells those core trilogies, which I think are pretty great for smart kids and teens. There are a bunch of reasons, including but not limited to: McCaffrey&#8217;s prose is ideally suited for younger readers, straight-forward and no-fuss; the plots are reasonably complex without being over-challenging in terms of adult themes, the Harper Hall trilogy is where I first discovered the boarding-school fantasy that the Harry Potter books utilize to even greater effect, and the good-guy\/bad-guy elements are interesting in that the biggest threat is environmental rather than all-encompassing, directed evil. I was also fascinated by the fact that the two trilogies kind of wove in and out of each other, and by the concept of a civilization that declined rather than progressed. I&#8217;m very grateful to have read those books in my tweens.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nAll points I&#8217;d agree with, save perhaps for the declining civilisation; that&#8217;s the case in the first book, but by the second it&#8217;s clear there&#8217;s a renaissance of sorts going on.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNow I have to confess I&#8217;d actually never read the Harper Hall books, but by sheer coincidence I picked them up yesterday, meeting my father at Amsterdam&#8217;s Waterlooplein flea market. I just finished the first book, <cite>Dragonsong<\/cite> today; at less than 200 pages it&#8217;s not a long read. But my goodness, this was even more of a wish fulfilment story than the first Harry Potter book is. A girl on the edge of becoming an adult is denied her talent in making music, put down by her family and Hold, runs away and discovers that not only she&#8217;s able to impress more fire lizards than everybody else who ever tried, but has her musical gift recognised by the masterharper itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Spurgeon links to my review of Dragonquest and expands on it: I think he&#8217;s right, but I actually think he undersells those core trilogies, which I think are pretty great for smart kids and teens. There are a bunch of reasons, including but not limited to: McCaffrey&#8217;s prose is ideally suited for younger readers, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,26,137],"tags":[1489],"class_list":["post-4540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-book-review","category-fantasy","tag-anne-mccaffrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4541,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4540\/revisions\/4541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}