Dragonflight
McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern established the template for dragon-bonding fantasy, and she fought the classification debate herself, insisting it was SF because the dragons are genetically engineered. Whatever the category, it remains the most beloved dragon book in genre fiction.
The F’lar and Lessa relationship is where modern readers stop: his physical roughness toward her early on, and the way her personality flattens into something childlike once the romance takes over. Others simply find “no chemistry between the leads, and it all seems forced.” The prose is uneven, and readers attribute that to a book stitched from two novellas plus connective material, “the skeleton of a really interesting novel” with the seams showing in abrupt transitions. The gender roles are dated even for the genre, women “essentially treated like second-class citizens” without examination. And the lords resisting the dragonriders get written as simple greed.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
