To Ride A Rathorn [Paperback]

At last, the next installment in this series! Four novels and one slim collection of short stories in twenty years - this author is not just for Christmas, she's for a lifetime. P C Hodgell should be far better known than she is. She should be a NYT bestseller. She is brilliant. Her novels are dark, funny, intricate in characterisation and worldbuilding and deeply original. Tropes that have become standard in the twenty years since she started writing - lost heirs, soul-bonds to people and animals (and Hodgell makes it clear what a deep and terrible thing this is), the boarding school from hell (a military college, this time, and trying to shoot the Principal leads to a truly horrible death)- are made logical, convincing and terrifying. Hodgell does not shrink from the consequences of her premises, and I am pleased to be completely unable to predict what will happen next. The only point that irritated me was the reappearance of the child-abuse-as-important-traumatic-event motif, which is tediously common in US fiction at the moment, but that was a minor flaw in an otherwise deeply enjoyable book.

In her world, trees migrate and leaves fly south for the winter, and unicorns eat people and grow ivory armour that eventually grows over and suffocates them to death, and butterflies drink blood and feed on carrion (which, depending on where it dies, doesn't always stay dead).

The publisher could have spent some time and money proofreading. I hope that the next volume will come out soon.

17 years ago I discovered a dusty copy of PC Hodgell's God Stalk and was forever lost in Jame's world. To Ride a Rathorn gives us a few more clues to the tangled lives of the Knorth twins, Jame & Tori, as well as sinking us deeper into the rotten polital game that infects the Kencyrath.

Lovers of this series will find this a must read - those new to this world should start at the beinning with the publisher's reprint of the 1st two novels under the title Dark of the Gods.

I hardly know what to say. It's a great book, though the editing left a bit to be desired. Even Americans don't spell "disdain" as "distain"; the editor clearly let the story pull them along too fast to take note of the spelling and grammatical errors they should have been correcting. It's an annoying detraction from an otherwise fitting addition to the wonderfully entertaining, richly layered and textured world that Hodgell has created.

I'm still giving this 4 stars though, because it *is* a great book, enriching previous plot threads and introducing new ones as it takes us on the usual riotous ride of Jame's extremely peculiar life. I also note, with mixed admiration and relief, that despite the amount of time elapsed between books, Hodgell remains wonderfully faithful to her characters, adroitly picking up the flavours of their personalities and adding to them without destroying what has gone before. This is the Jamethiel Priest's-Bane I came to know in all the books before, but not a Jame in stasis, rather one who continues to grow from each alarming new twist in her life.

This book isn't stand-alone, so if you haven't read "God Stalk", "Dark of the Moon" and "Seeker's Mask", run, don't walk, and read those first ("God Stalk" and "Dark of the Moon" can be found in the omnibus "Dark of the Gods"). Also, if the long wait for this book was only made bearable by the fact that "Seeker's Mask" left us at a reasonable resting place, maybe you should brace yourself and wait a bit longer.

While certainly not leaving us on a cliff-hanger, events within "To Ride a Rathorn" reveal the disturbing consequences of one of Jame's actions in a previous book, and this particular plot-line is not brought to any form of resolution by the end of the book. Without spoiling but for those who have read the book, I refer to the importance of names. I, for one, find myself even more desperate for the sequel to this than I was to the one for "Seeker's Mask", and view with great disturbance the potential for an equally lengthy wait.

If you are resolved to wait but feel you have the mental discipline to refrain from reading (which I assuredly do not), I do recommend snapping this book up quickly, since the publisher is not known for large print-runs, and "To Ride a Rathorn" may well be hard to find if/when its sequel finds its way to book-stores.

I also find myself in the somewhat conflicted position of having to recommend, despite the unimpeachable qualities of the book, that you avoid reading "Blood & Ivory" if you haven't already. This anthology of short-stories by Hodgell reveals a lot of information on Jame and the Knorth history that should perhaps be avoided until after reading "To Ride a Rathorn" (perhaps even until after the entire series itself has been completed and read). I believe I would have found certain parts of "To Ride a Rathorn" more gripping had I not already known what would be revealed.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 31 reviews  4.8 out of 5 stars