Whatever you do, RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO READ THIS BOOK! It should be removed from the McCaffrey lineup by the publisher, it was so bad. A bunch of crappy characters, some of McCaffrey's most inattentive writing (and some of the latter-day Pern books are LAME, let's admit it), and a bunch of British class-warfare themes that the rest of us don't care about. Skip it.