C.J. Cherryh evinces genius when she writes, and too bad for those
who simply won't read science fiction or fantasy. Cherryh's
pacing is unparalleled, and her flawless characterization rivals that of
many a literary icon. Cloud's Rider finishes the story
started in Rider at the Gate, easily equalling the suspense and
action of the first book. Cherryh doesn't just explain how the emotional
telepathy works on this world where humans are the interlopers, or even
simply make such a state of things believable. She sets the reader
squarely in the ambient, forcing you to experience the intrusion and
confusion caused by the indigenous fauna's ability to image directly
into the human mind. Cherryh hasn't been awarded the Hugo for nothing.
Junior rider Danny Fisher and his young nighthorse mount Cloud have
rescued the three Goss children from the massacre at Tarmin. Brionne
Goss, who answered a rogue nighthorse's call and opened the gates at
Tarmin to a deadly vermin swarm, lies comatose. Carlo and Randy Goss,
whose imprisonment in the village jail for the shotgun murder of their
tyrranical father kept the vermin at bay, have nothing left in the village
that has always been their home. The only two senior riders left around
Tarmin can't help Danny or the Goss children. Tara Chang's partners were
killed by the swarm that Brionne Goss brought upon the village. She
thinks killing Brionne would be the wisest course of action, the only
way to avoid another massacre like the one that destroyed her own life.
Guil Stuart, whose dead partner's horse became the rogue and whose presence
on the mountain is Danny's sole reason for being there, is injured and
incapable of travel.
Tara sends Danny and Cloud up the mountain with
the remnants of the Goss family, imaging the way they need to take to
Danny through the nighthorse ambient. After a stop at one shelter, the
little group continues toward the next, hoping to make it to the next
village in a series of hops punctuated by rests in rider shelters.
Danny is a town boy from the plains whose experience with weather on the
mountain is minimal, and his decision to leave the first shelter when
they do is a mistake. Danny and Cloud, leading Carlo and Randy who pull
the sled carrying their unconscious sister, end up struggling through
the whiteout of a mountain blizzard. The trip to the next shelter should
take only a few hours, but the group is still stumbling through the snow
after dark in a world where a night outside stout walls in even the best weather
can mean death. Frostbitten and dangerously close to hypothermia, they
are drawn on by the sound of bells. They have passed not one but two
shelters in the blizzard's fury, and have arrived without warning at
the gates of Evergreen.
Brionne Goss still presents a danger, and Danny Fisher must pick the
truths he tells Ridley, Evergreen's rider camp-boss. He convinces
Ridley that Brionne must be kept as far as possible from the horses,
and he tells of Tarmin being gone, but he holds back the fact of Brionne
being the cause of the destruction down the mountain. Facts like that
in the ambient could cause everyone in Evergreen to panic and could end
in a massacre to twin the one down the mountain. While Danny tries to
prevent his secret knowledge from raining destruction down upon his new
safe haven, Carlo and Randy Goss fight for their own well-being. The
prospect of claiming Tarmin drives the villagers of Evergreen down a path
of greed and self-interest that could end up with the last survivors of --
and thus heirs to -- Tarmin dead. Most frightening of all, Brionne Goss
awakens in the care of a grief-stricken doctor who wants to replace her
own dead daughter with Brionne. In protecting the child, the doctor
increases the likelihood that Brionne will draw to Evergreen not only
another rogue horse, but a more deadly and unstoppable predator the likes
of which humans have never before seen.
Cherryh is fantastically talented at rendering the implausible plausible,
and Cloud's Rider is gripping and tense as a result.
The world Cherryh has created for this novel and its predecessor is a
frontier world where humans must struggle unceasingly to survive in their
environment. Sheer courage and determination play a far more important
role than technology, and Cherryh's masterful characterization is well
up to the story's demands. C.J. Cherryh stands highly regarded
in the genre, and for obvious reason. No sci-fi buff should
consider themselves well-read until they've made the acquantaince of C.J.
Cherryh.