- Paperback: 373 pages
- Publisher: New English Library Ltd; New edition edition (17 July 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0340689129
- ISBN-13: 978-0340689127
- Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 10.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 766,677 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In the distant past, colonists from Earth are stranded on a planet that is deadly to humans: the native wildlife is telepathic and the horrific images they project are enough to drive humans insane. Their only defence is to live in isolated communities protected by nighthorses. High in the mountains, Danny and his nighthorse are snowed in for the winter. Their greatest problem is an unseen predator that begins to prey on the humans...
About the Author
With critical acclaim, multiple awards and a string of bestselling novels to her credit, C J Cherryh holds a position as one of the most important science fiction writers of our day. She is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, and took an MA in classics at John Hopkins University.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was suprised to find that this was as yet unreviewed. C.J Cherryh has been one of my favorite authors for many years and I re-read her books on a regular basis.
This is the sequel to "Rider at the Gate" where the main protagonists were first introduced. However the book can and does stand by itself (the blurb on the back is helpful). The story is set on frontier-like colony in the late fall as true winter approaches. Humans are struggling to survive poor weather and telepathic predators and scavengers. Contact between villages is only possible if Riders act as guides and protectors. Each Rider has bonded with a nighthorse, one of the few alien lifeforms that humanity has befriended.
The start is typically slow, a young rider Danny and his nighthorse Cloud are trying to escort three orphaned children to the next village through a blizzard. Danny and Cloud do reach their goal with no major mishap and are able to deliver the children to the none-too-tender care of the village authorities, while he and Cloud are stabled with thw village's own Riders. However trouble has followed them up the mountain. The children are survivors of another village destroyed by a swarm of vermin, scavengers and an unknown predator that had been able to enter a heavily guarded gate. In addition the children are haunted in their dreams by a rogue nighthorse looking for a replacement Rider.
As the tale unfolds, the reader is submerged into the world. CJ Cherryh's narrative is like "surround-sound" for the mind; the pictures she paints and the images that she creates are so vivid that it is easy to lose all sense of time and find oneself reading avidly at three a.m. She depicts characters with an elegance of style that makes her dialogue all too easy to hear as you read.
If you have never read her books before, they ARE worth the effort,but they can take time to tune into. This is possibly not the best to start on (try one of the Chanur series), but it one that I keep coming back to , time and again.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
No one writes more persuasively about alien worlds and lifeforms than this author. This book is a sequel to Rider at the Gate so read that first but both are superb books that show C.J. Cherryh at the height of her craft. Rumours have it that a third volume in the series exists but will not be published because it is not sufficiently commercial. A great shame. These two volumes are a close second to the Chanur series and miles better than the Foreigner And Fortress sets of books.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
15 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
OK, but didn't live up to its potential
18 Nov 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
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.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
More Horse-Opera than Space-Opera
21 Oct 1998
Format:Mass Market Paperback
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.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Excellent! I impatiently await the next book.
3 July 1998
Format:Mass Market Paperback
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 ....
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