They may have the tightest plotline of any of the Pern books (my nitpicks are actually very few in this book) and it proves that once upon a time Anne wasn't wedded to her mor current theory on gay men, or at least not so nastily. K'lon, the blue rider in the books, is an absolute solid character, through and through, and his 'friendship' with the Green in another weyr is played up as a solid devotion. Yet NEITHER of them come of as effete or lacking in masculine characteristics to me.