Dragonheart

Dragonheart is a science fiction novel by the American writer Todd McCaffrey, published by Del Rey Books in 2008 and the twenty-second book of the Dragonriders of Pern series begun by his mother Anne McCaffrey in 1967.

It is a concurrent novel rather than a prequel or a sequel, which means it sits alongside stories already told about the same years, and it is the second book Todd McCaffrey wrote alone. The setting's central machinery is the Thread that falls from the sky at intervals and can only be destroyed in the air, which is why Pern keeps dragons and why the loss of a generation of dragonriders to illness is a catastrophe rather than a tragedy. Fiona is young, has just become the last of her line's children, and is handed responsibility for a weyr's future at the worst possible moment, and the novel is as interested in the internal politics of the weyrs and holds during the emergency as in the illness itself. Later books in the sequence follow the same generation, and Pern's timeline is one of the more carefully maintained in the genre.