Hard to believe that I did not get around to reading this before now.

books:

	• The Faded Sun Trilogy: Kesrith, Shon'jir, and Kutath C. J. Cherryh DAW, 2000 - 784 pages average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Hard to believe that I did not get around to reading this before now.

Don't make the mistake that I did-- Cherryh's classic trilogy about cultural isolation and risk is a set that should be read sooner rather than later.

As the human-regul war draws to a close, the question of what to do with the mri remains. They were the fanatical and deadly mercenaries used by the regul to attack the humans, and most people find them to be too dangerous to permit to flourish. However, when the mri face extinction, it is a human named Duncan who sets him self the task of preventing genocide.

Set in the Union-Alliance universe, The Faded Sun trilogy is among Cherryh's best work. It is also among her earliest novels, originally having been published in the late 1970s.

Why do I like Cherryh so much? The way that she can manage complexity without either losing the reader or dumbing down the plot makes her virtually unique. In the hands of a lesser writer, the mri would have been moon-dancing innocents unjustly targeted for death. Cherryh presents a complex situation with high stakes for everybody involved, but still manages to come down against isolationism and final solution.

Excellent, and highly recommended.

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A Story that stays on in the mind long after you have finished.

I have had a love-hate relationship with the few works of C.J Cherryh that I have read so far. I have thrown away some books in utter despair and have sat tightly glued to others. This has been to my pleasure, one of the latter.

Don't expect this trilogy to be an edge-of-the-seats sci-fi. It isn't. This is a slow (not slow by today's standards), moving fantasy that gradually details and develops a world from the thoughts and actions of its characters - who belong to three separate species, and hooks the reader into yearning for their stories.

Whether you like or hate the Mri, even if you find their culture ruthless, you will still be captivated by their mystique.

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Preparing The Way

I read this trilogy when it first came out in the 1970's and have returned to re-read it several times since then. It does speak to me and I have found the characters and their cultures and the conflicts between their characteristic mental attitudes and philosophies has made for very interesting reading; Cherryh has created some very interesting aliens here.

Now, looking back close to 40 years and much history later, I am struck by how this trilogy and "Dune" even more so, have introduced many concepts, words and ways of thinking I associate with conservative Islam and in particular the culture of the Arab Bedouin into popular culture. If you look at "Dune" in particular, you will see that Herbert took the vast majority of the information he used to create the Freeman culture--words, concepts and attitudes--directly from Islam with little alteration; it's like Herbert just thoroughly mined "The Encyclopedia of Islam."

The popularity of the Faded Sun Trilogy and the mega-popularity of the Dune books, I believe, have made people more kindly disposed to many of these otherwise foreign and harsh concepts than they otherwise might have been. I make no claim that the authors of these two works were consciously propagandizing for Islam, I just find the way these two works in particular very quietly slid these concepts and ways of thinking into popular culture so easily very interesting.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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 which first gave them life?

"This is a powerful story...inspiring in its determination and feeling of strange loyalties and stranger courage. It sticks in the mind long after the last page is finished."-- Analog

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