I have recently been revisiting the world of Pern through audiobooks to fill a long commute. I started with The Harper Hall trilogy, backtracked to Dragonflight and Dragonquest, forward to The White Dragon, then Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern. Had to skip Nerilka's Story as it was not available as an audiobook, so moved on to Dragonsdawn, and now Renegades of Pern.

What has become very clear on this relatively quick jaunt is how very much McCaffrey's writing and worldview matured from the late 60s to 1989 when Renegades of Pern was written. With Dragonsdawn and Renegades of Pern, I am finally in the era of McCaffrey that I remember best from my youth, with relative equality between the genders of the characters, a progression towards a more egalitarian culture, and the written romantic relationships feeling far less dated in terms of consent and sexual politics.

That being said, the structure of Renegades is a little odd and as other reviewers have mentioned it feels a little more like a series of novellas. There are multiple plots and multiple viewpoints, and it drops one entire thread for what feels like half of the book before resuming it a long way down the road. The first half or so of the book, we are with brand new characters, and then suddenly we switch viewpoints and resume the tale of familiar faces such as Piemur and Jaxom, et al in the Southern Continent, before integrating both storylines towards the tail end of the book. With the audiobook format I found this much less jarring than I might have otherwise, so it really didn't bother me. But other readers might not realize if they've only made it through the first part of the book that much of the substance of Renegades weaves intrinsically into a continuation of the events of the end of The White Dragon and leads directly into All The Weyrs of Pern.

All this to say, as always, McCaffrey develops her characters well, though maybe old favorites may seem a little more fleshed out than the new introductions, her command of the language is satisfying to read, and her world building remains ON POINT. Renegades may be no one's favorite Pern novel for its oddities of structure, but I appreciate it as part of the overall tapestry of the world of Pern. ( )

Yuck.

By the time I was halfway through the book I disliked all the characters. Every single one of them. They're all doing selfish crud with no redeeming features at all.

This isn't the clear good guys and bad guys Pern I was expecting, and it could have been without even changing the plot.

A few brighter spots towards the end, but to little too late, and a ending only someone selling a sequel would love.

The interesting Pern backdrop just barely helped me make it through, but you're better off finding a different Pern. ( )

Anne McCaffrey is the quintessential writer of fantasy books pertaining to dragons. These books are always wonderful, well written, and perfectly characterized. All of her series are great but the ones that take place on Pern are the best of all. A thoroughly fun and engaging read. ( )

Runs concurrently with the events in The White Dragon ( )

There she goes again. This is just the first three books told from a dozen other points of view. To begin with the many different points of view (which don't merge until somewhere around the middle of the book) was a bit disjointed and irritating to me. It took me a long time to get interested in the story at all and nearly just stopped reading the series all together. In the end I didn't hate it, but it is for SURE my least favorite. ( )