I so wanted to absolutely love this book. The Pern novels have always been firm favourites of mine, and although none of her other books affected me in quite the same way, McCaffrey is a favourite author still. After her death, her son got together many of her friends and family to write a series of essays on what his mother, and her books, meant to them.

There are some amazing pieces in here. The story of the mother reading 'The Ship That Sang' while nursing her disabled child is probably the most haunting, and I wouldn't expect anyone to read that without a tear in their eyes. There's a lot of humour running throughout and you get the distinct impression of Anne being a kind, caring person who did her utmost to help others.

But where it falls a bit short, for me at least, is I sometimes got the impression that this was about the authors of the essays, rather than about Anne herself. The worst one is the piece by her son, who seems to be more focused on all the protests and causes he's been involved in, briefly linking it back to his mother by saying she gave him the confidence to do it. The most disappointing was the one about horses - I turned to that first and found that, despite the author saying how much her and Anne talked about their horses, none of these stories were shared.

So, overall, a good read that has put me firmly in the mood to start my re-read of the whole Pern series, but one that has left me a little bit disappointed that I haven't learnt more about one of my favourite authors.