Customer Reviews

Cloud's Rider

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Cherryh is one of the best writers in the genre. Her worst work usually beats the best work of lots of other SF writers. I wasn't thrilled with this book, but that doesn't mean it's unreadable. It just isn't the best thing she's ever done. First, the good parts. The nighthorses are wonderful. Psychic steeds have already been done to excess by other writers. I usually find them pretty bland and saccharine. Cherryh, however, does a great job of endowing her beasts with believable animal personalities. They get jealous of other nighthorses. They throw tantrums. They mooch treats. They do the sorts of things that real critters do. The male characters are pretty well developed as well. Some are noble; some are creeps. All have normal human flaws, and they act like I'd expect people in their circumstances to behave. The female characters, unfortunately, are much more two-dimensional. I didn't really get a feeling for what makes them tick. The problem with "Cloud's Rider" is that the plot and the character development don't go together. The setup for the story is that an adolescent girl hooks up with a crazy nighthorse, causing all sorts of trouble. The story ends when the girl's attraction to the nighthorse is resolved. Alas, you don't really care what happens to the girl. Cherryh spends too little effort exploring her motivations. The girl doesn't have real presence in the story. Ending the story when her troubles are dealt with just doesn't work. The interesting characters still have growing to do, and you don't get to see it happen.

Humans have become stranded on a planet where the wildlife through telepathic projection stalk and confuse their prey into thinking they are safe, when in fact they are in danger of being attacked and devoured. Only the night-horses that are compatible with a chosen human companion can prevent this. The night-horse's telepathic - sending - abilities offering protection.

There is a real sense of the wild-west frontier in this book. Danny fisher's parents scraping by on mechanical, and furniture restoration work, behind the safety of the town's walls. Greed, jealousy, and lots of other grubby things.

Cloud's Rider along with its stablemate and precursor - Rider at the Gate, don't cover a lot of ground as far as plot is cocerned, both depending on a huge amount of fine detail, mostly to do with survival in the harsh and deadly environment. And this is the main weakness of the books. Yes, the whole story works as well as any of Ms Cherryh's other works, but I feel it would have been more agreeable had Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider been trimmed to about two thirds of current length, by condensing the rather long descriptive passages, brilliantly written though they are. Even so, for sheer overall effectivenes I would recommend that these books be read and in the correct order, since they are directly head-to-head with respect to each other. Rider at the Gate and then Cloud's Rider.

This seems a very underrated series to me. I am reading several series that I am eager to continue: Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, Terry Goodkind, and THIS SERIES. Believe it or not, I am perhaps the most impatient for this series. I have a read couple of C. J. Cherryh's books ... so far, this is my favorite (along with "Rider at the Gate"). The human-nighthorse relationship is fascinating. The possibilities for this mysterious planet where humans are trying to fit in are very intriguing. I feel like I know Danny Fisher and Cloud ....

Cherryh's "Cloud's Rider" continues the saga (after "Rider at the Gate") of Danny Fisher and the telepathic nighthorse, Cloud, with a desperate mountain climb through a horrific blizzard that would be plenty suspenseful all on its own. Add a crazed telepathic pursuer and a comatose girl whose thoughts can kill and you've got edge-of-your-seat, sci-fi adventure
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The climbing party consists of two boys and their comatose sister, the sole survivors of a village wiped out in a vermin swarm, triggered by a rogue horse. They are being led by neophyte rider Danny and his horse, whose ability to visualize the terrain in all their heads keeps them alive.

Riders and horses have a strong bond, a symbiotic relationship for which the horse will lay down its life. They guard trading convoys and villages from the local telepathic predators and are regarded with suspicion by non-riders who live in close-knit religious communities and distrust the riders' freedom.

Guiltily, Danny has a secret, which he does not share with the riders of the village where his party finds its winter refuge, thereby endangering them all. The reader's information also trickles in, sustaining the mystery just long enough to get back to the action.

Well-paced and well-plotted, "Cloud's Rider" offers plenty of adventure in a well-developed world.

Cherryh quickly sweeps us into the suspense of madness on an alien world and its threat to the fragility of a human foothold there. Leaving so many threads unwoven at the end, this is the stuff of nightmares. Beware bonding with the lovable characters that grace these pages, because this is the first time Cherryh cannot save them all...

I was completely enthralled by the prequel to this novel, "Rider at the Gate," which came to a satisfactory ending for me. I thought it was a one-off; I had no idea there was a sequel until I ran across "Cloud's Rider" at my local library. I immediately checked it out and devoured it -- read it through a second time before I turned it in.

It is a fitting successor to the first book, but unfortunately, clearly ends with a cliffhanger meant to segue into a third book. And apparently this third book has never been published. At least I have never been able to discover the title of such a book -- and believe me, I've looked.

WHAT happens to Brionne? HOW do Danny and Cloud, and their new partners Carlo and Spook, SOLVE the problem of Brionne and her new "steed"? What impact does this have on the challenges facing the fragile human colony on this world? I MUST know! And sad to say, apparently I will never know... As another reviewer has put it, this is a vastly underrated series.

C.J. Cherryh's writing style is an acquired taste; other books of hers have a similar confusing style, with run-on sentences and sentence fragments and so on, such as negative reviewers have cited regarding this book. (I'm thinking of "Tripoint" but also the "Foreigner" series.) But I love it! It is such a deep third-person point-of-view that it almost feels like first-person; it puts the reader so deeply into the story, it feels like you are in the skull of the character. You, the reader, are as confused as the hapless character, and you only discover the "answer" as he/she discovers it. It makes for a breathless, constantly-off-balance feeling that keeps you turning pages until the end.

I highly recommend this book and its predecessor, and urge Ms. Cherryh to produce the third installment!

After I had read Rider at the Gate I noticed a few things in the story that didn't add up. Like how come Danny thought that Spook wouldn't become a rogue. These questions were more than adequately answered in the sequel, Cloud's Rider. Cloud's Rider is even more terrifying than Rider at the Gate and the level of tension in the conversations, spoken or unspoken, really drives the novel forward.The description of the weather is so real that I could feel the snow around my face and my legs getting tired from walking in the snow. I eagerly anticipate the next novel in the series!

I have read RIDER AT THE GATE and CLOUD'S RIDER, I find the story enthralling, the characters are real, the relationship between the riders and their horses along with the enviroment is like a breath of fresh air, I am looking forward to another book in this series.

I recommend this book for readers over 18. I agree with most of the content of the positive reviews here. Reviewers who criticize the writing style in this book are expecting something else; I think the style suits the story perfectly. Cherryh's depiction of a society of insecure, defensive people who try to cover up their fears by squeezing everyone into only a small number of rigid social roles is thoroughly realistic. I personally am glad she left Jesus' name out of the mostly nasty "church" controlled by this mindset.

This is the first book I have read by Cherryh. I found the first couple of chapters diffifcult, mainly because I was trying to get the concept of the horses telepathy, but once I figured out how that worked the book became easy to read and highly enjoyable -I finished it within the day because I desperately wanted to know how things turned out.

In a strange land humans have previously been dropped by spaceships by some sort of higher power, the land is rough with lots of telepathic animals and many dangers. The humans live in high walled villages, spread far apart. Some of the humans have a special gift and are chosen by a horse to be their rider. They escort people back and forth between villages, the non-psychic would never dare venture out without a horse and it's rider to protect them.

Danny is one such rider and his first mission ever is to get two brothers and their 13 year old sister from Tarmin to Evergreen. Tarmin was completely destroyed by a rogue beast and the brothers and sister are the only survivors. Why they are the only survivors provides some fascinating twists in the tale.

I really enjoyed this book, it was interesting, unusual and well written. The only complaint from me is the very fast ending, but I am now hunting for the next book which completes a trilogy.