They were the mri-tall, secretive, bound by honor and the rigid dictates of their society. For aeons this golden-skinned, golden-eyed race had provided the universe mercenary soldiers of almost unimaginable ability.But now the mri have faced an enemy unlike any other-an enemy whose only way of war is widespread destruction. These humans are mass fighters, creatures of the herb, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals.Now, in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated race: a warrior--one of the last survivors of his kind; a priestess of this honorable people; and a lone human--a man sworn to aid the enemy of his own kind. Can they retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to reclaim the ancient world that first gave them life? The Faded Sun Trilogy (The Faded Sun #1-3)
C.J. Cherryh ✓ 0 Free download
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 dead into the fires of suns.
I can barely contain my excitement about the mri - this culture is brilliant! You see it in their philosophy on death and rebirth: life is as long as the cosmos, the great voyage from one planet to the next. Forgetting the previous world to be reborn on another, dying for the mri is both literal and metaphorical. Welcoming death, they play a game where knives are thrown to each other. To play the game is to cast one's fate from the hand, to let go, to make the leap forward freely, without fear. I loved the way that humans struggle to understand why the mri would want to harm their own comrades in such a game. The mri's explanations for their behavior are never without reference points to human culture--even their strict caste system creates hierarchies that mirror our own society. Yet still, the great tragedy of the novel is how cultures misunderstand one another--in fact, the whole novel is a riveting diplomatic nightmare.
Granted, Cherryh's story contains a classic trope: going native. She breaks it, however, by disallowing the white hero to function as a savior to the natives, seducing one of their women in the process. Dances with Wolves/Avatar/Pocahontas this is not. Cherryh instead opts for a male-on-male bromance--which was a highlight for me. I loved the warmth that grew between Duncan and Niun during the 3rd book.
The Faded Sun is a mash-up of all things SF: ancient mysticism and futuristic machines, swords and lasers, spaceships and psychic grizzly bears, imperialism and violence. I loved it and I'm so sad it's over. English At first, this arrives as a fairly typical, if dense, political space opera, done in Cherryh's typical, inimitable style. For those who have read other Cherryh books of this stripe, like the Chanur books, you may find this one refreshingly comprehensible, as I did. It has the requisite complicated political relationships and plots within plots and betrayals and all that, but Cherryh seems to have gone out of her way, in this early series, to help the reader out and make sure he or she is following along. I found the first book acceptably engaging, and while the Mri are your common honour-formality-warrior-Klingon-type we've seen in lots of other places, they do have added complexities. Best of all, Cherryh has created for this series one masterful villain species in the Regul, a race of detestable Jabba-the-Hut types who casually murder their children and who, upon adulthood, have to get around on these electronic sleds because their legs can't sustain the weight of their own bodies. They are a wonderful and disgusting creation, one that Cherryh never entirely takes advantage of.
Then, in the second book, something very interesting happens. The novel narrows its focus, gains emotional weight, and switches gears into what I would call anthropological science fiction, something we may normally associate with Ursula K. Le Guin. We have three characters, including one human and two Mri, stuck on a space ship together, soaring through space, searching for the origin planet of the Mri - we've got a bit of very welcome Asimovian awe here, and a surprisingly intense tone, and the series suddenly grabs us by the throat. This second novel, the best of the three by far, presents a deep psychological exploration of values and culture and the complicated relationships between people of different values and cultures, and the whole thing is so fascinating and convincing that I found myself contemplating the issues and questions involved in a personal way, even relating them to my own life, something not usual in my experience with this subgenre of science fiction.
And, alright, the third book is a disappointment. By the end, none of the three major characters are used in any enlightening way, no single other character is explored in any kind of depth, the pacing switches back and forth from a meandering crawl to a superheated rush, with nothing in between, and the resolution is convenient and too-quick and too safe and too predictable.
So, is this worth reading? Yes. Aside from the middle book, this isn't exceptional, but it's fun and engaging in large swaths, and that second book in particular is a work of art. If you can get through some of the superficial and rushed bits in that third book, the whole series does have significant pleasures to offer. English It took me so long to read this book I should be booted from Goodreads for being a disgrace to readers everywhere. I went through 2 girlfriends, 2 Presidents and 3 holidays before I finished this book.
This was elegantly written and contained truly original nothing-like-human alien races, 3 dimensional characters and fully developed relationships. It was never boring , I was always happy to read it but i never sucked me in for any length of time either. It is not what I would call a page turner.
Like the other Cherryh books I have read there was very little sunlight. Our characters got chewed up and spat out again and again and again. At times it felt like an SF account of a holocaust. Important, brutal, well written but not very enjoyable. English While I have read some fantasy by C.J. Cherryh, this trilogy (Kesrith, Shon'jir, and Kutath) was the first science fiction I've read. Wow! I was completely engaged while reading and thoroughly satisfied when I finished. What more can you ask?
The three species that dominate the story (mri, regul, and human) are each carefully drawn and distinct. The non-humans are not human-like in different bodies--they are definitely alien. And yet we are drawn into their stories as completely as we are into the humans. And the dusei--so important and yet, so mysterious. The mri learn more of their long-time companions even as we do. Only the elee were not as fully realized and yet, for the purposes of the story, we knew enough.
There was no time in this story when I felt I knew what was going to happen next, and yet, as the plot unfolded, it made perfect sense.
A solid 10!
English I currently re-read this book, and it keeps its place as my favorite science fiction novel of all time. A few of the things I particularly like about it: First, the characters. Cherryh taks a good deal of time developing her characters to the point that you actually CARE about them. Many authors (sci fi and otherwise) are too concerned with the plot to let the reader get to know the characters, and so when it comes down to plot crunch-time, nobody really cares what happens. Cherryh is very much the opposite. You care what happens to Niun and Duncan, you feel their emotions, you fear, cry, love, and laugh with them because Cherryh takes the time to let you into their hearts and minds. The friendship between Niun and Duncan feels so very real, because we see from the point of view of both, and understand how their minds slowly move together towards that point. Second, the emphasis on the alien cultures. Unlike in Star Trek, where all the alien cultures are just humans with a little body paint, the mri and the regul both are completely alien. While the mri at least are vaguely humanoid, both are very alien in their thought-processes, thinking in ways that humans find difficult or impossible to follow. Cherryh does a brilliant job in this book of describing and letting the reader into the cultures of both the mri and the regul. Fascinating! Three: The fact that the book is not resolved by Niun discovering he would be better off human, and assimilating. I've read so many books where the alien character is assimilated by the human character, with the feeling that human culture is better anyway, so of course it will win out. This book is the opposite, and runs in the face of that xenophobic cultural bigotry. Duncan becomes mri. Stavros is well on his way to becoming regul. I love the idea from this book that cultural identity is not just skin deep, but comes with a certain thought process and behavioral patterns - the fact that Duncan is mri is recognized both by the mri themselves, and by the regul - it is only the humans, set in their shallow ways, who refuse to see this change.
In all, this is my favorite book in the science fiction genre. English
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. English Every now and then I take a break from the new releases stacked atop my desk to treat myself to a classic. This time I chose Kesrith, which begins The Faded Sun Trilogy by C.J. Cherryh. I meant to read just one volume, then set the trilogy aside and get on with reading those new releases. Then I meant to read just the second, Shon’Jir before getting on with business. Then I had to read the last, Kutath.
The Faded Sun Trilogy has long been available in one volume and should, in my opinion, be read that way: together, all at once. In essence, it is a book with three parts. The separate novels, Kesrith, Shon’Jir and Kutath follow on, one from the other. You could jump into the story at the beginning of each; Cherryh does spare a little thought for the casual reader. But each part or novel builds on the threads of the other. When taken together, the characters and story become more complex and small moments that might otherwise have little meaning become deeply insightful.
So, the story: After forty-three years of galactic war, the regul have ceded the planet Kesrith to humanity and plan to withdraw peaceably. The planet seems barely habitable. Vast deserts, a thin atmosphere, acid rain and an unstable crust. Even the alien regul are forced to live in partially subterranean habitats and the only city is situated on the edge of an alkaline sea. The planet occupies a portion of space that will allow humanity access to unexplored territory, however. It is a gateway.
The regul did not fight their own war. They employed mercenaries known as the mri to battle the humans. The handful of mri still inhabiting Kesrith are thought to be amongst the last. The mri are feared; they are ruthless killers, single-minded in their purpose. Their presence on Kesrith disturbs their employers and the humans. Despite peace with the regul, humanity does not trust the mri to recognise the fact the war is over. The regul share a similar fear. Their shared concern is not unfounded; the mri have lost almost their entire population to a war not their own for a purpose no one quite understands.
Two men, the first humans to arrive on Kesrith, attempt to unravel the shifting lines of mood and politics. Stavros is intent on keeping peace with the regul. His assistant, Duncan, is curious about the mri. Their interests separate them and they are both pulled into a new conflict, one between the regul and the mri, one to each side.
The unravelling of the history of the mri, which they hope will help them forge a future, and the revelation of true face of the regul makes for compelling reading. The story is shared between mri, human and regul points of view and the three species regard unfolding events with startlingly different opinion and purpose. Tall and bipedal, the mri appear less alien than the squat and utterly foreign regul. But their culture is unfathomable. As a reader, I had a hard time grasping it. The regul, while completely alien, seem to understand the culture of exchange; politics, ambition and greed. They almost felt human until they demonstrated quite clearly they were not.
Cherryh does a remarkable job of keeping the three species separate. Her aliens are just so alien. Overlap between sensibilities is slight — enough they can communicate and bargain, forge alliances, but not so much they will ever truly understand one another. This, alone, keeps the tension taut throughout the trilogy. The question of when one character will relent is never answered. They are all strong players and they all have goal they consider important, particularly when the action moves to a far flung star system years from any known civilisation, and decisions they make affect their chances of ever returning ‘home’.
It’s hard to talk about the story as a whole without giving away the stunning shift of priorities toward the end of the first book. Suffice to say, the trilogy covers a journey for all involved; physical and metaphorical. All are seeking something and not all will find it. I came away extremely satisfied by the conclusion. To my mind, just desserts were served, even though I had to overlook the ruin of the dinner table. What kept me flipping pages until that end, however, was the fear things might turn out very, very differently.
Written for and originally posted at SFCrowsnest.
English 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 Mri – 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 Mri 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 in which 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 its 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 my favorite Miyazaki film, Mononoke Hime: 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 but to him just a fellow traveler. Jiro’s clearly wise, and he maintains a good sense of humor, even against those who oppose him.
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. English Three points:
1. NOBODY does aliens as well as C.J. Cherryh (at least in my experience).
2. This is not a page-turning barnburner. This is a slow, deep immersion that stays with you for a long time.
3. No book that has inspired a Michael Whelan cover has ever disappointed me.
But back on that first point. Cherryh's mri and regul are two awesomely different species, the former mercenary fighters for the latter, who don't fight themselves, but really can't be trusted. They're both battling humans, who, frankly, win. The story begins in the first aftermath of the treaty. Regul don't need mri anymore, but are terrified of them. As long as they were under mercenary contract, it was cool, but now? Not so much.
The mri are supreme individual fighters, but have been decimated by the war with humans. They also have a code and culture so rigid that it makes evolution and adaptation nearly impossible. This is the true strength of the story as Cherryh tells it from the perspective of the mri. How can they survive as a species without sacrificing who they are?
Insert one human soldier who learns to bridge the gap between humans and mri (much like Cherryh's on-going Foreigner saga).
The result is a three-book saga that tells the deep, personal story of a species in decline, a species betrayed, and a species true to themselves.
As I said, not a barnburner, but deeply, deeply satisfying. English S.T.O.P. right there!
Now pay attention:
If you like character driven and immersive Science Fiction you need to read this. It’s a slow burner, but beautifully crafted and deeply poignant. It’s frankly criminal that this isn’t better known, overshadowed as it is by Cherryh’s other high-profile works. Other authors can learn so much here, especially how not to lose focus of the story being told. Yes, there are frustrations, but they are purposefully introduced to underscore story elements, and in the end the pay off is so rewarding that you’ll be quick to forgive these. The same applies to the slower portions. Any story that deals with clashing cultures can be challenging: how to draw readers in without alienating (no pun intended) their own belief systems, but while forcing them to do introspection and ask some difficult questions?
The perspective shifts between novels, but it isn’t disruptive to the story flow. I would recommend reading the trilogy as a whole to get the full emotional experience, which is why an omnibus edition makes sense. That, and the fact that the individual books are long out of print; they are:
Kesrith
Shon'jir
Kutath
All-in-all a magnificent achievement that deals with the mysterious origin, and identity, of an entire race. And: some very nice imagery. So, if you generally enjoy atmospheric and evocative tales of wonder, please, please give this a try.
From the Synopsis
Now, in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated race: a warrior - one of the last survivors of his kind; a priestess of this honorable people; and a lone human - a man sworn to aid the enemy of his own kind. Can they retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to reclaim the ancient world which first gave them life?
Interesting fact: I was actually drawn to this by the Michael Whelan cover art, and now it features among my all-time favourites, which just goes to show… English