#he's also terrified to watch randy possibly die by his hand

[thiefnforger]

the look of a man who when death looks him in the eye, face to face; he realizes for once in his life he's afraid to die.

[atamascolily]

Thoughts on re-reading Cloud’s Rider by C.J. Cherryh

As a follow-up to an earlier post, I was re-reading Cloud's Rider by C.J. Cherryh (the sequel to Rider at the Gate). Some observations:

-To be a rider is rather like being a Zen master - you have to be able to calm your mind and focus on the present moment (rather than getting caught up in your thoughts/fears/imagination) or else you'll risk spooking your horse and having said thoughts/fears/images running around in the ambient, amplifying outward and possibly coming back to kill for FOR REAL. It's such a great metaphor for real life, honestly.

-Danny grows up in the space of a two day climb through hell, and it's awesome. Of course, it helps he has good mentors in the form of Guil, Tara and later Ridley, rather than those jerks from Book One.

-So much of this book is a slow build. I'm really okay with this, because I am of the school where I would happily watch Interesting Characters wander around their worlds and explore FOREVER with little in the way of actual plot (exhibit A: my fanfiction), but it's interesting to go back and re-read this book and realize how little actually happens until the last quarter of the book - and then it's pretty much nonstop action thriller and lots of people die.

-Also, as was the case in the last book, what people THINK is going on for most of the book turns out to be TOTALLY INCORRECT AND FULL OF LIES. Which makes the book jacket summaries kinda wonky, too.

-Evergreen might be the first place we see in this Crapsack World that's actually kinda an okay place to live by my standards. I mean sure, it's on the edge of civilization with all the attendant problems, but the town actually has trees inside the wall (something that amazes our cityboy protagonist) and the politics and culture seem more liberal and chill than some of the other places we see in this series. Compare John Quarles vs. Reverend Wales from Tarmin, for instance, or Tara and Luisa's involvement in Carlo's trial in Tarmin vs. Ridley bringing Slip into Evergreen village to suss out Earnest Riggs' murderer.

-Which is not to say people in Evergreen aren't also human, and prone to varying levels of murder, scheming and treachery, but... I feel like we meet way more decent people in Cloud's Rider than we do for most of Rider at the Gate. Or maybe that's just because we spend so much time with Ridley, Callie and Jennie and their stable, loving family dynamics.

-Is the name "Finisterre" (to refer to the whole planet) ever used in the actual books, or does it just come from the supplementary material?

-What triggers Brionne to wake up and why? Does anybody actually tell any of the riders about it before Ridley sees her on the porch when she spokes Slip? I don't think so, because of the whole town vs. rider camp setup, and Ridley not realizing how dangerous she was until way too late, but still... awkward.

-Previously, I referred to Brionne as a sociopath. She may well be, but I think "narcissist" was actually the word I was looking for. Nothing matters except for what she wants. She gets away with it a lot on account of her age and gender, but compare her with her brother Randy, who also "wants" horses with a similar intensity. When Danny tells Randy to stop 'cause he's freaking Cloud out, Randy thinks about it for a while and makes a conscious decision to stop (even though he still REALLY wants a horse, he's willing to tone down his thoughts to keep from upsetting them because he cares about them as sentient beings, rather than just as objects). Brionne, on the other hand, never does this.

-When Brionne is ranting to Darcy about "her horse" from the previous books, she refers to said horse as "male".... which means that she MET MOON AND WAS RIDING AROUND WITH MOON ON MOON'S BACK AND NEVER EVEN BOTHERED TO NOTICE ANYTHING ABOUT MOON OR LISTEN TO HER AT ALL because it didn't fit in with her fantasy of finding the best stallion in the herd... !!!! And she doesn't mourn at all for the death of her horse; instead she's just pissed that they killed "her" horse and she's going to get another one because you just can’t keep Brionne down. (And she doesn't even know Moon's name!) !!! (Refer back to observation above).

-I really want an origin story/First contact tale for this planet, even though I know those are really hard to do well. Take Dragonsdawn by Ann McCaffrey, for example. Except the Finisterre first contact story would totally be the anti-Dragonsdawn because all the human colonists would die horribly and screaming until the nighthorses showed up. Then there would still be screaming, but less of it. (So, really, more like the Alien movies than the Pern books.)

-Wow, Finisterre is like the anti-Pern in almost every way and I love it.  

-Both books in this series are copyrighted in 1996, which is just... so fast. Wow. That's awesome.

-Also, because these books were written in 1996, there's no mention of any Internet or anything like it. I assume given Finisterre's frontier setting and infrastructure problems, Internet would be right out - I mean, the phones only work for half the year anyway - but it's jarring to me in light of 2017's tech. (Also, the Internet probably summons spook-bears just like the radio does. Because Finisterre just can't have nice things.)

-I also wouldn't mind a follow-up book detailing the Further Adventures of Danny, Carlo, Guil, Tara, Jennie (and possibly Brionne? although seriously, that's kinda terrifying to contemplate, given her dramatic exit at the end of the book. I'd say she couldn't survive, but it's impressive how often she's been able to defy the odds before and come back, possibly through sheer bloody-minded narcissism).

-What do the oceans of Finisterre look like? Please tell me there are telepathic space whales. Now I want a fic about riders and nighthorses guarding a shipping convoy to/from Anveney and encountering said telepathic space whales... who may actually be the only creature on the planet NOT out to kill humans, and kinda chill. (But we could also have some telepathic giant sharks, too, just because it's Finisterre.)

(Okay, I'll probably have to write this and the First Contact Finisterre things myself. Whatever. It’s awesome in my head.)