To borrow a TV phrase, I consider All the Weyrs of Pern (the book immediately proceeding Dolphins of Pern chronologically) to be where McCaffrey jumped the shark with the Dragonriders series. I will refrain from including any spoilers here and only say that All the Weyrs has the natural feel of a conclusion about it. Then McCaffrey had to go and write two Pern books to follow it! To put it another way, all the books written before All the Weyrs of Pern have warrented multiple rereadings. All the books after, I have only read once.

I agree with other reviewers that in general this is less exciting and the main guy is a bit boring, but what I loved best was the due credit that the dolphins finally received after being neglected for so long. It's also in line with the other post-saved Pern books that left me happy yet depressed at the same time.

I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this book! I'm a huge Pern fan...reading the original series again for 3rd or 4th time...I thought I had read this one, but it didn't seem familiar at all...

I found the interactions between humans and dolphins and especially the charming childlike-ness of the dolphins just what I needed to read right now. Deep in depression lately, this book gave me a welcome respite, and brought me happy tears and many smiles. I get what others say about it not adding to the overall plot of Pern...but I still thoroughly enjoyed the dolphin/human interactions and found it all so charming and a downright balm to all my recent emotional turmoil. I need to read more books like this that make me feel this good. And how I WISH we could actually help dolphins to talk in real life! :)

I forgot how much I dislike Aramina,

Talking dolphins and dragons! Score!

This was one of my favorite installments of Pern when I was a kid and it still ranks pretty high for me. I love the fact that the dolphins of Pern never forgot their duty, despite us humans totally lacking. And the exploration of additional avenues of learning and living is always going to be a powerful message imo.

Just couldn't get into this one the way I did with the others.

Very disappointing, I have loved the original Pern series and re-read them several times. This was hard going, it has taken me nearly a year to complete reading it because it was so badly written as to be tedious. Predictable, un-engaging, and pointless, I stopped caring about characters I had previously loved and just wanted to reach the end in the hope it would add something to the Pern mythos, sadly the ending was as predictable and contived as the rest of the book. I won't be reading any further books in the series, I'd like to remember Pern as I originally encountered it

science fiction