Here’s the short review: This book gets five stars because it made me agree with genocide, against a sentient alien species that I found beautiful and wanted to live.But that alone is not very satisfying, so here’s the long review:One of the most wonderful aspects of science fiction (particularly space opera) is that humanity itself is characterized. Whereas in other genres, there might be foils to the protagonist, in space opera, an alien species serves as a foil to all of humanity.So it is with The Faded Sun Trilogy, which tells the tale of three species:The Regul – giant slug-like creatures (basically, Jaba the Hutt), with eidetic memories and centuries-long lifespans, who hold almost no regard for the life of their genderless ‘younglings.’ They are hardly mobile and not at all when they get their gender and become adults. Instead they ride ‘sleds’ which I pictured as slightly larger Segways. Because of their memories, the Regul write nothing down. Thus each elder is, in fact, an invaluable source of knowledge and history. The death of an Elder is, to them, like the burning of a library. They are smart and logical. They’re merchants and bureaucrats. They are not fighters. The story begins at the end of a long war between the Regul and Humanity, which humanity won. Naturally. Because we’re awesome.The Mir – The Regul did not actually fight in the war between them and humanity. Rather, they hired the Mri. The best way to describe the Mri would be to take Japanese samurai code Bushido, the cold beauty and pride of LOTR-style elves, and the stoicism and ritual of Dune’s Fremen and mix it all together. The Mir are stubborn and arrogant and inflexible, which is why humanity won the war.The Humans – Well you know them. Or do you?In fact, that’s the intellectual heart of this story. I labelled this trilogy a ‘space opera’ but it’s not really. There’s a minimum of fighting. There are, let us say, about 5 explosions throughout the whole trilogy, and they are not described in greater detail than a paragraph or two. Sometimes they’re so minimally described that I had to go back and be like, “Wait… did that really just happen?” There are maybe two blaster battles and just as few sword battles (the Mri favor close, ritualistic combat).Rather, the meta-conflict is one of diplomacy. Don’t think this means it’s boring. The maneuvering and verbal sparring depict a tense exploration of how one species views the other species. For example, the Regul don’t lie because their perfect memories render outright falsehood easily detectable. The Mri don’t lie because it goes against their code of honor. Thus neither trust humans, who do lie. The Regul’s perfect memory and lack of physical movement cause them to consider the other two species to be lesser on an intellectual level. They forget and how sad is that? But of course the Mri and Humanity find the Regul’s immobile forms grotesque. The Mri and Humanity hate each other because they just fought a war against the other. But of course the Mri only fought against Humanity because the Regul ordered them to do so, but then the Mri begin to hate the Regul for other reasons. Meanwhile, the Regul wantonly slaughter their own younglings and don’t understand that Humanity does not. And the Mri, who will often kill each other while playing a game of spinning, whirling, throwing daggers, will never, under any circumstances, kill one of their children. And so on and so forth.If it sounds complex, it is. But it’s satisfying. The Regul and Mri are one of the best depictions of aliens I’ve ever read. They’re never described in a way that’s ‘inferior’ or ‘superior’ to humanity in a general sense. Just different. With a different biology, psychology, and culture. You certainly avoid any of that awful cliché where humanity (often in the form of a white European man) comes into an exotic culture and goes native and then saves them all.Yet all my talk of species and diplomacy and culture is deceptive. The novel is large, but it’s focus is small. That is, the Faded Sun may have a galactic backdrop, but it’s otherwise a personal, intimate novel. In particular, it focuses on Niun, a Mri warrior, and Sten Duncan, a Human soldier. We see, too, other specific characters, Regul and Mri and Human, whose thought processes are explored in finely crafted, detached (but not cold) detail. Because of this, it’s hard to ever feel outright antagonism for any of the characters.In a lot of ways, in fact, this book reminded me of a Miyazaki film. What’s absolutely superb about Miyazaki is that he depicts everyone in a sympathetic light. Anti-heroes are fairly common, but Miyazaki creates what I call anti-villains. Consider the characters of Princess Mononoke (you’ve seen it right? If not, um, stop reading and go do so right away): Lady Eboshi of Iron-town burned down the forest, turned a noble boar into an evil demon, attempts to kill Princess Mononoke, and takes pride in hunting down the spirit of the forest. Villain, right? Wrong. Her female workforce are women she rescued out of sexual servitude; she willingly goes among lepers and treats them kindly; and she shows immense personal courage. Okay so what about Jigo the monk? He wants to kill the spirit of the forest in order to receive a mountain of the gold from the emperor, and he blackmails Eboshi into helping him do it. Surely such a greedy, underhanded fellow is a villain! Nope. The first time we meet him, he shares food with Ashitaka, the protagonist. He’s clearly wise, and maintains a good sense of humor, even in the face of obstacle.So it is with The Faded Sun Trilogy. Even the Regul – who are clearly the ‘bad guys’ – aren’t depicted in a manner that presupposes their villainy. The reasoning for their actions (they want to wipe out the Mri) makes sense. In fact, I even agreed with them – I began to see, in the Mri, some parallels with the likes of ISIS. A refusal to adapt to modern times. A clinging to past traditions. ISIS, to be frank, are evil. Any sympathy I might have had for them was wiped out when I read how they had institutionalized rape. If a genie appeared to me now and offered me a magical button that would completely wipe out ISIS – every man, woman, and child – I would press that button. That isn’t bravado or jingoism. Such massacre is not a good act. It’s an evil act. BUT I WOULD STILL PRESS IT. Maybe you’ll say to me, horrified, how can you do that? Hurting children is always evil. What if I said this: pressing that button would kill 1000 children. But it would ultimately save 2000 other children. Would you still ask me how can I press it? Or would I be asking you how you can afford not to?Thinking thusly, I began to understand the Regul mindset. I began to believe – despite my great sympathy and respect and appreciation of the Mri culture – that their existence in the fictional universe of this book was a blight. That, sure, maybe for a time, they’ll be peaceful, but their ways, their culture, will only lead to bloodshed and instability.And that’s just fabulous. That’s the type of power this book contains. On one hand, it depicted a fictional people and culture with such authenticity and detail that I could feel them in my thoughts, as tactile as a blanket against my skin. I knew their history, their glories, their beauty, their hopes. And on the other hand, I grasped and even sympathized with the mindset that would see those people made extinct. I held these two opposing ideas in my mind simultaneously and because of it, my mind expanded. It became greater. That is the mark of a great book.
grim, dry, melancholy, frustrating, riveting, endearing, and tragic are all good words to describe this moving anti-epic. well it looks like there are two more words to add to this list, moving and anti-epic. now how about another: bromantic.grim: this trilogy is about a human and two members of an alien race known as the Mri, their long flight back to their homeworld and what they find there. this is not an "adventure". it is a stark, dark tale about how easily betrayal can be rationalized and, more importantly, how hard it can be to survive that betrayal if your version of survival equals never giving an inch to your betrayers - or your allies.dry: this trilogy is austere and introspective, and Cherryh evinces little humor and lightness in the telling. yet the dryness works perfectly and never comes across as pretentious. she approaches her subjects in a careful, detached manner and that style is a perfect fit for her story.melancholy: one character gives up everything. two characters lose everything. they do not spend much time in reflection on the things they lost, but that loss pervades the atmosphere and their characterization from beginning to end.frustrating: it is not the novels that frustrate, it is the characters within. the Mri are a frustratingly pure race. they do not negotiate. they do not take prisoners. they view all non-Mri as un-people; the definition of "Mri" is "the People" while all others are "tsi-Mri", or "not the People". they do not bend, they do not yield. they are a hard people and the fact that so many others are set against them makes their single-mindedness even more frustrating. why in the world would a human want to become one of them? Cherryh makes that decision understandable and the harsh Mri strangely noble, without turning them into that infernal cliché, the "noble savage".riveting: there is much that quickens the pulse. an attempt at genocide. dangerous journeys through wastelands. political intrigue. challenges and duels and games with throwing blades. how tough it is to travel in the dark of space. spaceships bringing fire and destruction upon abandoned cities. men learning to find true connection despite an automatic inequality between them. a woman becoming a strong and fearless leader.endearing: the dusei are empathic bear-like sidekicks to the Mri. they are scary and adorable and a fully conceived alien species. Cherryh really outdid herself in creating these fascinating, wonderful creatures. she made me dream about them.tragic: there are two horrific slaughters in this trilogy and they cast a long shadow on all subsequent actions in the narrative. the entire journey is suffused with such a deep sadness; the tragedies made this trilogy genuinely depressing but not in a way that made me want to stop reading - in a way that made me consider all such slaughters. I admired Cherryh's ability to make these tragedies so terrible and yet so resonant. these tragedies are what happen to people like the Mri, in science fiction and in our own real world.moving: and yet ultimately this is not a depressing work. there is much that saddens and despair is woven throughout the story. but this isn't about the end of a people; this is about how a people can perhaps survive, on their own terms. and it is a story with flawed, real characters who will stay with me.anti-epic: do not expect sturm und drang. despite everything I listed under riveting and tragic, the music this trilogy plays is all in minor notes. things are not made to be larger-than-life; instead they are precisely the size of individual lives, no matter how great the stakes. it is not operatic, it is intimate.bromantic: at the heart of this saga is the story of a friendship between two men, a human and an alien. watching this relationship evolve into something real and lasting was amazing. the (platonic) love that grows between them is the foundation of the entire trilogy; it is the best part of these excellent novels.
What do You think about The Faded Sun Trilogy (2000)?
C.J. Cherryh's books often tend to focus around three things: devious intrigue between competing factions struggling for power, a lone man fighting the elements to survive (often with the essential companionship of an animal), and an isolated person plunged into a very different culture, whether human or not, and forced to adapt. The Faded Sun trilogy has all of these elements, but they just don't work quite as well as they do in later Cherryh works (the Faded Sun books were among her first sci-fi novels). The human who becomes a member of the warrior cult of an alien species is done better in "Cuckoo's Egg"; the political scheming (probably the best part of the trilogy whenever it rears its head) is done better in a number of other books, most notably "Cyteen"; and the lone man (plus telepathic animal) against the elements angle is done better in "Rider at the Gate" and "Cloud's Rider" (I don't know if it's possible to get sympathetic hypothermia from reading about somebody nearly freezing to death, but those who are particularly suggestive might prefer to read the Finisterre novels on warm summer days only). The main problem with the trilogy is, in the end, the mri, its main alien species: not only is their culture, with its strict caste system, rather retrograde, but they themselves are just too inflexible to be really interesting. Only Niun manages to achieve any sort of interest as a character, thanks to his close attachment to Sten Duncan, the human who becomes mri: the rest of the mri that we meet remain changelessly themselves. Plus, since the mri are originally desert dwellers, the shadow of the Fremen hangs heavily over them: not that they are really all that similar (they aren't even human), but all books about desert-dwelling tribes take their inspiration from the same sources, and since Frank Herbert got there first, and with considerable power, it's hard for subsequent authors to avoid appearing at least slightly derivative. The human and regul (the other alien species) characters have more opportunities to grow and change -- in fact, the regul, with their eidetic memories and disposable younglings, are actually more interesting than the mri -- but since the mri are the show here, they don't get as much time. This puts most of the burden of keeping things interesting on Niun and Duncan, Cherryh's plotting -- mostly strong, but occasionally a bit disjointed -- and the struggle of man and mri to survive in the desert. The result is basically a dry run for Cherryh's later SF career: fans will probably enjoy it, but those new to Cherryh should probably start elsewhere, with "Cyteen" or maybe "Fortress in the Eye of Time".
—William Leight
The Faded Sun trilogy is one of the most unique books I have ever read. My first thoughts after finishing this marvel of a novel: unbelievably dense culture building multiplied three times (for three cultures), all the while using space opera to churn out complex moral questions. Cherryh manages to turn humans into the great Others, the exotic foreigners whom you struggle to understand. Once you reach the end of the story, you begin to think like the mri, the nomadic mercenaries who send their d
—Meggan
I had a hard time overall with the Faded Sun. The mri are a fascinating species, but their existence and survivability in the face of a refusal to adapt and change confuses me. I know it's a huge theme of the book, and it remains compelling all the way through, but on occasion I had a hard time suspending the disbelief. It would seem to me, correctly or otherwise, that such a rigid and unyielding code of life would not lend itself to long-term survival. Indeed it *nearly* didn't, but I wouldn't expect a society like that to get anywhere at all.In either case, the books were still quite good. Cherryh has a bit of a drier nature to her writing, but the story was definitely compelling enough to see all the way through.
—Justin Kemppainen
