The White Dragon

The White Dragon is a science fantasy novel by the American-Irish writer Anne McCaffrey, first published in 1978. It completes the original Dragonriders trilogy of the Dragonriders of Pern series, arriving seven years after the second book.

It is the coming-of-age story of Jaxom, the young Lord of Ruatha Hold, who had accidentally impressed Ruth, a white runt dragon, in an earlier novel. Growing up, Jaxom has to manage being both a Lord Holder and a dragonrider, a combination that neither the Holds nor the Weyrs are organised to accommodate, alongside his own teenage frustration at being kept out of the fighting.

The Oldtimers, the riders who came forward out of Pern's past, try to steal a golden egg from Benden Weyr, and that attempt is what forces the political crisis the novel is built around. Ruth, who is unusual in that he always knows exactly when he is, is able to travel through time, and that ability is the thing Jaxom has that nobody else in the Weyrs does.