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A review by felinity
Dragonholder: The Life and Dreams (So Far) of Anne McCaffrey by Todd McCaffrey, Anne McCaffrey
4.0
I was a little dismayed when I saw how short this was, but the introduction explained why: written in 1999, it's more like a scrapbook of family stories, and ends in 1988 shortly after The White Dragon was first published.
In it we learn about Anne's childhood, what - and who - brought her to Ireland, and how elements of life influenced everything from her characters' emotional distress to those little touches of reality like bubbly pies and overly-intelligent animals as well as events which became plotlines. I was surprised by her interaction with the SF community and other now-big names (Isaac Asimov, Harry Harrison, James Blish and more) and there were some nice reminiscences there.
There are good times and bad times, happy memories and angry or sad ones, and definitely some hard times (other aspiring novelists should pay attention to these), but overall this is indeed explaining some of the stories behind the stories.
In all, a nice little book, good for McCaffrey fans. I wish that with this 2014 re-release it had been updated to include more of her life; I feel that it stopped just when her writing career had taken off, and I'd love to have read the same sort of stories which inspired her later works.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
In it we learn about Anne's childhood, what - and who - brought her to Ireland, and how elements of life influenced everything from her characters' emotional distress to those little touches of reality like bubbly pies and overly-intelligent animals as well as events which became plotlines. I was surprised by her interaction with the SF community and other now-big names (Isaac Asimov, Harry Harrison, James Blish and more) and there were some nice reminiscences there.
There are good times and bad times, happy memories and angry or sad ones, and definitely some hard times (other aspiring novelists should pay attention to these), but overall this is indeed explaining some of the stories behind the stories.
In all, a nice little book, good for McCaffrey fans. I wish that with this 2014 re-release it had been updated to include more of her life; I feel that it stopped just when her writing career had taken off, and I'd love to have read the same sort of stories which inspired her later works.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.