I have to say that I'm truely disappointed in Todd McCaffrey's writing, and this book in particular. It makes no sense and seems to be about 15 wildly different stories all crammed together with no thought to comprehensibility. I'm a long time Pern and McCaffrey fan, and I'm truely shocked that she even let this out the door, much less on the shelves. I've read better fanfic. I'm just glad I checked it out from the library rather than automatically buying it. I think I'm planning on just skipping anything else of Todd's because this was so terrible. I even almost didn't finish it but held out hope that it would somehow all come together in the end. Didn't happen. So I recommend, Don't waste your time. Get some Robin Hobb or something good.