This was the last collaboration between mother and son, which Anne described in a foreword to Dragon's Time as "helping Todd wrap up this very dramatic part of Pernese history".

Following the disease which killed many of the dragons of Pern in Dragonheart, there is no longer an adequate defense against the Thread falling in the current (third) Pass of the Red Star.

Using the dragons' ability to travel between different times, dragonwoman Xhinna, rider of blue Tazith, and her group of blue and green dragonriders go back in time to some uninhabited islands, hoping to return in sufficient numbers to be able to fight Thread effectively.

This weyr is unusual because breeding is normally the preserve of the much larger gold and bronze dragons.

Critical reaction to this novel has been mixed, with Jackie Cassada in Library Journal praising "memorable characters and a good balance of individual dramas and large-scale action"[3] while Beth Revers in Sacramento Book Review finds that the action has crowded out character development in comparison to earlier novels.