I'm so sad I never picked this up when I first discovered Dragonsong! This picks right up where the first book left off with little more than a paragraph break – which makes me wonder if they were written at the same time and the publisher asked them to be split – and is just as excellent. Menolly is still one of my favourite characters on Pern and, while I wish the way the Harper Hall worked was explained a little bit more, the world is a vibrant, wonderful place to spend time reading about. 

My main criticism is that the ending feels rushed. The last few chapters absolutely race through the set up for the event on the last few pages and it feels very out of place. I get it, she's a prodigy, and I enjoy her as a character enough that it doesn't ruin the story for me, but I wish it had left some space for the third book to be about her development in the craft instead of Piemur. 

If you want to make reading this series even better – many of the songs mentioned in both this book (and the Pern series in general) appear in two albums: Masterharper of Pern and Sunset Gold on spotify. Sunset Gold has more of Menolly's songs including the firelizard one that gets mentioned so often. There's plenty of instrumental pieces if you can't read listening to lyrics, too!