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The Year the Cloud Fell (Roc Book) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Outside the lodge, the crier's words carried through the chill evening air..." (more)
Key Phrases: Storm Arriving, Speaks While Leaving, Big Nose (more...)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Year the Cloud Fell will please not only SF and fantasy fans, but also lovers of historical and revisionist Western fiction. In 1886, the U.S. Army experimental dirigible A. Lincoln is making a scouting flight above the Unorganized Territory when a terrific thunderstorm strikes the craft to earth. Now the mission commander, the president's only son, is a prisoner of the Cheyenne Alliance. The Indians have no reason to love the president, the implacable enemy they call Long Hair: General George Armstrong Custer. And only the strange shamanic vision of one young Cheyenne woman stands between Captain George Armstrong Custer Jr. and death.

With his debut novel, Kurt R.A. Giambastiani has created a fast-paced, imaginative, intelligent alternate history with a bold, breathtaking climax. The Year the Cloud Fell has "gotta" quality, as in "Honey, I'm coming right to bed, but first I just gotta finish this chapter." The novel ends conclusively, yet it also leaves the door open for a sequel that readers will eagerly await.

Unfortunately, whites who create historical fiction or movies about American Indians often end up producing a sort of noble-savage porn, and alternate history provides more possibilities than any other fiction for a simplistic approach to white/Indian interactions. However, Giambastiani has avoided such pitfalls. The Year the Cloud Fell provides no easy answers, noble-savage stereotypes, great-white-father saviors, or clichéd situations. Bravo. --Cynthia Ward



Review

A fresh and interesting treatment of Native American legend. -- S.M. Stirling, author of the Nantucket series

A rousing good story...a great alternate history tale. -- William Forstchen, author of The Lost Regiment series
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Roc; 1st edition (March 6, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0451458214
  • ISBN-13: 978-0451458216
  • Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #907,612 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Kurt R. A. Giambastiani
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Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Outside the lodge, the crier's words carried through the chill evening air. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Storm Arriving, Speaks While Leaving, Big Nose, One Bear, Mouse Road, Blue Shell Woman, Two Roads, Three Trees Together, Kit Fox, United States, Standing Elk, Two Cuts, Healing Rock Woman, Magpie Woman, Picking Bones Woman, Red Squirrel Woman, Standing Bull, Tree People, Big Greasy, Closed Windpipe, Fort Whitley, Horse Nations, Red Hawk, Red Whistler, Big Salty
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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews
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3.9 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An Enjoyable Fantasy of Indians Riding Dinosaurs, February 20, 2003
The Year the Cloud Fell is the first novel in the Fallen Cloud fantasy series. It is an alternate timeline story in which the Nebraska Sea never fully retreated over the past 65 million years. This allowed dinosaurs of all kinds to acclimate to the changing conditions until modern times. Furthermore, some of these dinosaurs were tamed by the natives and used as riding animals.

In this novel, George Armstrong Custer, Junior, is the son of the US President, a Captain in the US Army Engineers, and the commander of the experimental dirigible Abraham Lincoln. On its maiden flight, the dirigible is caught by a thunderstorm while flying over the Unorganized Territory and forced down. There George is nursed by Speaks While Leaving, a Cheyenne woman who has true visions, and then captured by a patrol led by Storm Arriving. George is offered the name One Who Flies and is taken back to the encampment, where he is exposed to Cheyenne ways. He tries to escape, but runs into a patrol, falls off his mount, and lands on his own knife.

As he recovers, he makes friends among the Cheyenne, Storm Arriving and Speaks While Leaving among others, but one of his closest is Laughs Like A Woman, a Contrary, a subject of the Thunder Beings wrath and scrutiny. Eventually, George begins to see the errors in the white man's view of the Cheyenne and to regret the hurts done to them. To stop the killing, he joins with his new friends to ride coup on the chief of the Horse People, his father.

This novel is billed as science fiction, but is really a fantasy. First, it explicitly involves direct intervention and contact with the Thunder Beings of Cheyenne legends. Second, it concerns a history that is basically unchanged until the United States collides with the Cheyenne, despite the major geological deviance of the Nebraska Sea; just the effects on world wide weather over 65 million years should be enough to change the course of European history, much less the direct effects upon the Spanish, French and English explorers. The chances of George Armstrong Custer fighting in a Civil War in the United States of America while North America still has such a geological feature, and dinosaurs as well, is extremely small. Maybe about as small as all the air around someone's head withdrawing to leave a vacuum; possible but not very likely.

This novel probably should be classified as a native fantasy. However, with sufficient suspension of disbelief, this misclassification does not detract from the quality of writing, for the plot is interesting and the characterization is very well done. Overall, it is a pleasure to read.

Recommended to anyone who enjoys adventure and exotic cultures in a fantasy setting.

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Alternate history, November 17, 2001
By Alan Robson (Auckland New Zealand) - See all my reviews
The Year the Cloud Fell by Kurt R. A. Giambastiani is a rather ingenious alternate history novel set in an America that never was. It is 1886 and George Armstrong Custer, the President of the United States, sends his son on a perilous mission into the Cheyenne territories. George Junior flies off in an experimental airship. An inopportune thunderstorm wrecks the ship and George Junior is captured by the Cheyenne, who see this as a heaven sent opportunity to negotiate from a position of strength. However a wise woman of the nation is not convinced that all is as it seems. She believes that the prisoner has been sent by the Thunder Beings in the sky and that a crisis much deeper and more profound than a simple war with the white men is looming.

So far so straight forward and apart from the mention of an airship this might be almost any penny dreadful western novel. What raises it above the ordinary, however, is the sheer audacity of Giambastiani's vision. In this alternate America the war between the Indian and the white men has dragged on in a never ending stalemate. Neither side can defeat the other for they are both quite evenly matched. The dinosaurs never died out in North America and they occupy the same ecological niche that horses occupy in Europe. Since time immemorial the Cheyenne have tamed and ridden the great lizards. This gives them an advantage in warfare - they are mounted and agile and skilled in the arts of fighting. The lizards make them more than a match for the white man's cavalry. The war drags on endlessly and the Cheyenne occupy vast tracts of land and effectively prevent the expansion of the white men into the west of the country. Something has to give, and now in 1886 the crisis is at hand.

It's a rousing tale, rousingly told.

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Dancing With...Dinosaurs?, February 1, 2003
By John Burris (Milford, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Combining "Dances With Wolves", Harry Harrison's "Eden" series and a heaping helping of Harry Turtledove, Giambastiani has concocted a mostly satisfying, fast-paced tale. The amount of research that went into this was obviously prodigous as far as Native American culture goes and the Old West atmosphere rang true. The sequel is on my desk now and I look forward to contnuing the adventure.

On the downside, contrary to one of the critical reviews, the Myth Of The Noble Savage is on full display here. Perhaps it was unavoidable since the story revolves around Native American culture but it would have been nice to have seen the author employ less of a politically correct angle and opt instead for a more textured, even-handed approach. Not that the Native Americans didn't get screwed. They did and royally so, but not every Indian was noble and not every white was a bigoted devil. Let's face it, people are people. Long before any European set foot on this continent the residents warred with, slaughtered and enslaved each other without reservations. They also managed to exterminate an entire Megafauna (Mammoths, Mastodons, Ground Sloths, etc..). Humanity has generally refused to learn from the mistakes of the past regardless of race, religion or creed. OK....off the soapbox and back to the book....

As a dino lover I would have liked to have seen evidence of a level of research on dinos equal to the rest of the research evident in the book. They are such fascinating creatures and they could have been put to better use here. They essentially inhabit this story in the same manner that horses do in conventional westerns. Still, it was a kick to see them ride hadrosaurs (derived Parasaurolophus descendents?) and therapods into Washington even if their successful march through settled territory was rather implausible.

All in all, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. A promising debut by an obviously gifted and passionate writer. Recommended!

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars One star, because "zero" wasn't an option...
I heard about this book for some time before its release - mostly because they created a website (since gone) to promote it - so I figured I'd get it when it came out in... Read more
Published on September 1, 2005 by David W. Johnson

5.0 out of 5 stars The start of a satisfying alternate history series
This first book in the four-books-and-running alternate history series will introduce you to George Armstrong Custer, Jr (aka One-Who-Flies) and his slightly-different America... Read more
Published on March 26, 2004 by Michael W. Scheu

1.0 out of 5 stars Great idea but....
...He obviously spent alot of time researching the Cheyenne culture to write that part so well however he spent none putting flesh on the "skeleton" of their opposition. Read more
Published on March 5, 2002 by C. A. Temm

3.0 out of 5 stars A fairy-tale twist to an old story
Having read a number of alternative stories about the U.S.-Native American conflict of the 19th century, I was completely unprepared for what Mr. Read more
Published on March 2, 2002 by Mark M. Fox

4.0 out of 5 stars Successful - Recommended
This is my first "what if" book and if it hadn't been so good, I might not be looking for others. There is no rough language or gratuitous sex. Read more
Published on December 29, 2001 by JD Schaefer

5.0 out of 5 stars THE YEAR THE CLOUD FELL -- GREAT ADVENTURE
Kurt Giambastiani has introduced me to a whole new reading experience. I read from two to eight books a month, and have done for years, but this is my first alternate history. Read more
Published on May 3, 2001 by Lola W. Schoenfeld

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating set of possibilities
The Year The Cloud Fell is a well done work of alternate history. I'm new to the genre but I'm glad this book was my introduction. Read more
Published on April 24, 2001 by Todd Baker

5.0 out of 5 stars Redefining Alternate History--A winner!
THE YEAR THE CLOUD FELL is one of those books that expands the definition of alternate history. Like Stirling's Nantucket series, Giambastiani goes beyond the simple "Point... Read more
Published on April 23, 2001 by S.L. Wood

5.0 out of 5 stars Cowboys and Indians .... and Dinosaurs? You Bet!
My wife and I both found this a great read. Neither of us could put it down once we started it! We didn't question for a minute the world that the author created... Read more
Published on February 14, 2001 by Kimberly A Baker

5.0 out of 5 stars Cowboys and Indians .... and Dinosaurs? You Bet!
My wife and I both found this a great read. Neither of us could put it down once we started it! We didn't question for a minute the world that the author created... Read more
Published on February 14, 2001 by Kimberly A Baker

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