Dragonsinger

Dragonsinger is a young adult novel by Anne McCaffrey, published by Atheneum in 1977 and the fourth of the Dragonriders of Pern. It follows Dragonsong, and it is the second of the three books set in the Harper Hall, written for a younger readership than the earlier Pern titles.

The Harper Hall is a conservatory where minstrels, teachers and other music professionals are trained, and Menolly's story picks up within hours of the close of the previous book. She is the first girl to be apprenticed to the Hall, and the Masters are divided on whether she is worth the trouble of training. Because of her sex she cannot share a dormitory with the other apprentices and is housed instead with the female students, most of whom are more interested in rank than in music and treat her as an outsider; the apprentices, in turn, tell her she is not properly one of them.

Her nine fire lizards draw attention she did not ask for, and she has to find her place in a hall that has never made room for anyone like her.