"Dragon's eye" redirects here. For the fruit, see Longan

Longan

Dimocarpus longan, commonly known as the longan, is a tropical tree native to South and Southeast Asia, in the Indomalaya ecozone known for its edible fruit.-Vernacular names:The fruit is known as longan or longyan in English...

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Red Star Rising or Dragonseye is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by the American-Irish author Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey

Anne Inez McCaffrey was an American-born Irish writer, best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series. Over the course of her 46 year career she won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award...

. It was the fourteenth book published in the Dragonriders of Pern

Dragonriders of Pern

Dragonriders of Pern is a science fiction series written primarily by the late American-Irish author Anne McCaffrey, who initiated it in 1967. Beginning 2003, her middle child Todd McCaffrey has written Pern novels, both solo and jointly with Anne. The series comprises 22 novels and several short...

series by Anne or her son Todd McCaffrey

Todd McCaffrey

Todd J. McCaffrey is an Irish American author of science fiction best known for continuing the Dragonriders of Pern series in collaboration with his mother Anne McCaffrey.-Life:...

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Red Star Rising, or Red Star Rising: Second Chronicles of Pern, was published by Bantam UK

Transworld (company)

Transworld Publishers Inc. is a British publishing division of Random House and belongs to Bertelsmann, one of the world's largest media groups. It was established in 1950, and for many years it was the British division of Bantam Books. It publishes fiction and non fiction titles by various...

 in 1996. For release in the United States next year it was retitled Dragonseye.

Plot introduction

[After the events of All the Weyrs of Pern, The Dolphins of Pern, and The Skies of Pern, Thread is less of a threat to the planet.] Returning to an earlier time in Pern

Pern

Pern is a fictional planet created by Anne McCaffrey for the Dragonriders of Pern series of fantasy and science fiction books. It is said to be "Rukbat 3", the third planet in orbit around the star Rukbat, counting outward....

ese history, the author brings the earlier conflict of Thread reappearing in the Second Pass.

Following in the footsteps of the novels that established the background of the colony, the book exposes the incremental loss of technology due to the hardships of thread, and inevitable progress towards the more feudal society shown later in the series timeline. It answers such questions as:

• What happened to the computers?
• What happened to the technology?
• Who created the Star Stones?

It also shows more about the process of caring for a newborn dragon than is shown in any of the other Pern books, and explores the ramifications of male riders of green dragons.

The main characters are Clisser (college head, Fort Hold), Chalkin (Lord Holder, Bitra), K'vin (weyrleader, Telgar), Zulaya (weyrwoman, Telgar), Iantine (journeyman artist) and Debera (green rider, Telgar)