SF/Fantasy reviews
 

Rider at the Gate

C.J. Cherryh is well known as a fantasy author who constructs complex ecologies, cultures, languages and paradigms. I truly feel that the Rider books are among the best she's ever written.

Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider are set on a distant planet, colonised by humanity some centuries before the time of the books' narrative. The colonisation was accomplished before it was realised that the entire ecology of the planet was highly telempathic; spook bears and goblin cats on the one hand, and smaller creatures like nightbabies and various small vermin, are alike highly dangerous predators to any creature that has no mental defence. Humans and their cattle cannot survive alone in the Wild, with hungry creatures beguiling their minds and making them unaware of their true surroundings, leading them to their deaths.

Humanity's only defense are Nighthorses, carnivorous, three-toed, black horse-like shadows that are the most dangerous of all the Wild's creatures. Fortunately they love the ordered, sequenced thoughts of human beings, the images and patterns that hold to specific, logical goals. Nighthorses, then, come down from the High Wild to find human minds, and choose riders to be their thinkers and planners, giving humans the opportunity to travel the dangerous and impossible outback without being easily killed.

It was not always thus; people spread throughout the high mountain ranges, forming little mining towns and supply enclaves that would communicate by radio. During the first winter the animals were drawn by the radio signals, turning each little haven into an inchoate hell of dark images that drove the inhabitants mad, until they opened the gates and let in the Wild - and were devoured. Now no one uses radio, and each little town has its rider camp outside the wall. The nighthorses protect against the animals with imaging of their own, but the townspeople fear and loathe them, and their strange, twisted religion apostrophises the horses as evil beasts and their riders as hell-bent. But without the riders, the cattle would be unable to graze in the fields, and the people would be unable to live or travel. So the Riders stay, despite the hatred of those they protect.

The greatest danger in the Wild, however, is not a goblin cat or a spook bear, but a nighthorse gone rogue. Its rider dead, its mind in chaos, it becomes a terrifying force for destruction and death as it seeks out company, looking for the rider it has lost. Its thoughts contaminate other nighthorses, and its powerful sendings can completely take over a town. Once the gates are opened, the wild comes in, and nothing can save the townspeople from the compulsion to kill, or to stand helpless to be killed. Not even another nighthorse can defeat a rogue, unless its rider is smart enough to outwit it.

The plot.

The very word rogue is enough to terrify the whole of Shamesey town, and the huge nighthorse camp that surrounds it completely. And thanks to a rogue, a female Rider is dead in the High Wild. Her partner, Guil, is on the run from Shamesey, trying to find out what happened in spite of the fact that he's being hunted by two groups of riders, one of which has taken along Danny, a young kid from Shamesey, and his horse Cloud<floating cirrus/storm nimbus>, a young nighthorse from the High Wild. They must track Guil and his horse, Burn <fire/pain/dark>, straight to the place where the rogue killed Aby Dale and her mare, Moon <white full moon in a black sky>. But the rogue could be anywhere, lurking in the forests at the high passes with winter on the way, and the tiny upland villages helpless before it. And then there is the party of riders that doesn't have anyone's best interests at heart but their own, chasing after Guil with murder in mind.

Cherryh delivers a tour de force so brimming with tension that one feels the need for a Valium and a good night's sleep; the action is intense, the ecology brilliantly crafted, and the intricacies of human relationships managing to be the most important factor even in a world where crawling rodents can beguile the unwary to walk over a cliff and thus provide a ready meal. The rogue stalks the mountain encampments while the humans and their horses manouevre for position, although no one will say what the stakes really are, and whether they know more about Aby Dale's death than they are telling.

An utterly brilliant book. I've recently been given its sequel, Cloud's Rider, which continues Danny and Cloud's story from where Rider at the Gate left off. I cannot recommend this book more highly; it is a triumph of the fantasy genre and it keeps you guessing right till the end. The intense spookiness, coupled with the apocalyptic preaching of the native religionists and the strange machinations of the townsfolk (even their fiery deaths, in some cases) gives the whole narrative a feeling of strange immediacy, even though it is set light-years away in the far future.