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The Faded Sun #3
Kutath
Kutath was an ancient world and a dying one. In ages past, its best sons and daughters had gone to the stars to serve as mercenaries in the wars of aliens. Now the survivors of its star-flung people, the mri, had come back-in the form of a single woman, the last priestess-queen Melein, and a single man, the last warrior Nuin. And one other-the human Sten Duncan who had deserted Earth-s military forces to swear service to the foes of his own species-.
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
11 people are currently reading
721 people want to read
About the author
C.J. Cherryh
293 books3,571 followersCurrently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
July 23, 2013
Imagine my surprise when I saw the original review I wrote for Kutath. I can only assume I was so stunned by the whole experience that I didn’t have it in me to write something halfway decent. Truth be told, this is one of my favouritest favourite series’ ever! To call the review half baked would be doing it a favour. That said, it actually does say more or less exactly what I felt about the book. Problem is, it wouldn’t go a long way in convincing anybody else to read the Faded Sun trilogy, and that is exactly why I need to revisit it. Because, frankly, you need to read this. Yes, you!
I am well aware that opinion regarding these books is split down the middle, mostly because of what people perceive as “pacing issues”. Rubbish! If you’re a Goodreads member your attention span should handle this with a smile. Also, how can you form an opinion if you don’t try it for yourself? It isn’t an action fest, true enough, but it’s darn good… and pretty deep in places.
So what’s it about? Plenty. That’s the beauty. In distilled form though, it’s about the identity of a race, and their mysterious origin. Who are the Mri? It’s a surprisingly dense story, and apparently the author favours it above other books she has written. Which is saying quite a lot! Thing is, it's kind of pointless to try and review this book on its own, since the series is very much a single story, much like The Lord of the Rings.
Go check it out: start with The Faded Sun: Kesrith or get the omnibus edition, The Faded Sun Trilogy which is still in print.
Original Review
This has been a terrific trilogy, and Kutath brings everything together neatly. As far as pure story-telling goes, this is a really good example of what can be done with a Sci-Fi setting. What it lacks in non-stop action and cutting edge gadgetry it more than makes up for in plotting and emotion. The Faded Sun trilogy evokes imagery and drips with atmosphere.
Classic stuff!
Highly, highly recommended.
I am well aware that opinion regarding these books is split down the middle, mostly because of what people perceive as “pacing issues”. Rubbish! If you’re a Goodreads member your attention span should handle this with a smile. Also, how can you form an opinion if you don’t try it for yourself? It isn’t an action fest, true enough, but it’s darn good… and pretty deep in places.
So what’s it about? Plenty. That’s the beauty. In distilled form though, it’s about the identity of a race, and their mysterious origin. Who are the Mri? It’s a surprisingly dense story, and apparently the author favours it above other books she has written. Which is saying quite a lot! Thing is, it's kind of pointless to try and review this book on its own, since the series is very much a single story, much like The Lord of the Rings.
Go check it out: start with The Faded Sun: Kesrith or get the omnibus edition, The Faded Sun Trilogy which is still in print.
Original Review
This has been a terrific trilogy, and Kutath brings everything together neatly. As far as pure story-telling goes, this is a really good example of what can be done with a Sci-Fi setting. What it lacks in non-stop action and cutting edge gadgetry it more than makes up for in plotting and emotion. The Faded Sun trilogy evokes imagery and drips with atmosphere.
Classic stuff!
Highly, highly recommended.
January 4, 2015
[9/10]
Third part of the Faded Sun space opera, and I feel the need again to stress the fact that the three books are meant to be read together and in the order of publication. It makes no sense to start the journey in the middle or with the last chapter, so if you haven't read them already, you should check the two earlier books, Kes'rith and Shon'jir. They serve mostly for setting the stage of the final confrontation between two galactic civilizations - human and regul - over control of the deadliest mercenaries in history: the nomadic and secretive mri.
Kutath is a desert planet, just like Kes'rith, the mri home planet that was left behind in the first novel after humans and regul destroyed the last fortress of the mri. Kutath is the destination of the journey into Darkness from book two, and also the true beginning of the mri nomadic existence, the deepest secret in their racial memories, the place they are sworn to protect at all cost from foreigners. But now, with the last ke'len warrior (Niun) and the last queen/priestess (Melein) there is a human convert brought to Kutath (Sten Duncan), and on his heels are the hounds of war: an human / regul expedition that cannot accept the right of self-determination for the mri. they see the mercenaries without a contract as a loose cannon that can become a deadly weapon in the hands of their adversaries. There may also be a fourth civilization on Kutath (the ephete and decadent e'lee), a late-comer on the chessboard, a sort of joker card to be played in the end game confrontation. Also present are the mri pets from Kes'rith, the bear-like dus, and they are my favorite alien race Cherryh has created for this series, with their telepathic powers and their mix of independence and devotion to their chosen companion.
The first two books in the Faded Sun series excelled in the character development and in the clever use of political and military gambits to drive the plot, but suffered slightly on the action sequences. The last novel makes up for the slower pace of the build-up, and fires with all guns from orbit and from planet side, not forgetting to showcase also the samurai-style swordmanship of the ke'len champions. The outcome and the final revelations are also very satisfying, despite a grievous bodycount of mostly innocents caught in the line of fire. The major theme remains the examination of the military mentality and the consequences of the use of force in the contact between alien civilizations, and on how fear of the other, of the unknown, can lead to war crimes and genocide.
No one ought to kill something and not know it . exclaims at one point one the human pilots over a scene of carnage, the result of shots fired indiscriminately by a starship from a safe distance away in orbit.
This bitter adage is also illustrated in the way people in position of power, who already have made their mind about the path they want to take, will pick and choose at the intelligence they receive or they will outright alter the reports to better serve their purpose:
People want statistics to justify what they want to do.
To balance this scary mindset, we have only the 'last samurai' Sten Duncan, who is viewed as a traitor by his own side for siding with the mri, and a scientific team who wants to study and understand the mri civilization before it is blasted out of existence. Boaz, as the exobiologist on the team, is the one that expresses the unequal struggle between fact-based evidence and propaganda driven policy (I already made the parallel to current events from the Middle East in an earlier review):
She had illusions once, of the importance of her freedom to investigate, the tradeoff of knowledge for knowledge, for a position in which she, having knowledge, could sway the maker of policy; there had been a time she had believed she could say no.
For me, Kutath is the best part of the series, and the best writing so far from Cherryh, who I believe deserves all the awards and the nominations received for her prolific career. She demonstrates here control over both her characters and over the action, but most importantly she finds the Big Ideas, the ones that look at the human race as a whole and map our journey to the stars, asking what will we do when we get there: build or destroy? Or will we remain Earth bound to wither and disappear with a whimper like the e'lee:
Is that the end of all the races and the civilizations, and the dreams of the world, to be able to leave a few stones buried beneath the sands, to tell the Dark that we were here? Leave us out of your pan'en, she'pan of elee.
The mri have been portrayed for most of the series as inflexible in their traditions and death obsessed, but are they truly the reason all the planets in the path of their pilgrimage are left devoid of life?
From further research, I believe The Faded Sun is itself an episode of a larger space-opera that spawns more than twenty books written by Cherryh about the human expansion in the galaxy. I plan to check them out, probably going for Downbelow Station next.
Third part of the Faded Sun space opera, and I feel the need again to stress the fact that the three books are meant to be read together and in the order of publication. It makes no sense to start the journey in the middle or with the last chapter, so if you haven't read them already, you should check the two earlier books, Kes'rith and Shon'jir. They serve mostly for setting the stage of the final confrontation between two galactic civilizations - human and regul - over control of the deadliest mercenaries in history: the nomadic and secretive mri.
Kutath is a desert planet, just like Kes'rith, the mri home planet that was left behind in the first novel after humans and regul destroyed the last fortress of the mri. Kutath is the destination of the journey into Darkness from book two, and also the true beginning of the mri nomadic existence, the deepest secret in their racial memories, the place they are sworn to protect at all cost from foreigners. But now, with the last ke'len warrior (Niun) and the last queen/priestess (Melein) there is a human convert brought to Kutath (Sten Duncan), and on his heels are the hounds of war: an human / regul expedition that cannot accept the right of self-determination for the mri. they see the mercenaries without a contract as a loose cannon that can become a deadly weapon in the hands of their adversaries. There may also be a fourth civilization on Kutath (the ephete and decadent e'lee), a late-comer on the chessboard, a sort of joker card to be played in the end game confrontation. Also present are the mri pets from Kes'rith, the bear-like dus, and they are my favorite alien race Cherryh has created for this series, with their telepathic powers and their mix of independence and devotion to their chosen companion.
The first two books in the Faded Sun series excelled in the character development and in the clever use of political and military gambits to drive the plot, but suffered slightly on the action sequences. The last novel makes up for the slower pace of the build-up, and fires with all guns from orbit and from planet side, not forgetting to showcase also the samurai-style swordmanship of the ke'len champions. The outcome and the final revelations are also very satisfying, despite a grievous bodycount of mostly innocents caught in the line of fire. The major theme remains the examination of the military mentality and the consequences of the use of force in the contact between alien civilizations, and on how fear of the other, of the unknown, can lead to war crimes and genocide.
No one ought to kill something and not know it . exclaims at one point one the human pilots over a scene of carnage, the result of shots fired indiscriminately by a starship from a safe distance away in orbit.
This bitter adage is also illustrated in the way people in position of power, who already have made their mind about the path they want to take, will pick and choose at the intelligence they receive or they will outright alter the reports to better serve their purpose:
People want statistics to justify what they want to do.
To balance this scary mindset, we have only the 'last samurai' Sten Duncan, who is viewed as a traitor by his own side for siding with the mri, and a scientific team who wants to study and understand the mri civilization before it is blasted out of existence. Boaz, as the exobiologist on the team, is the one that expresses the unequal struggle between fact-based evidence and propaganda driven policy (I already made the parallel to current events from the Middle East in an earlier review):
She had illusions once, of the importance of her freedom to investigate, the tradeoff of knowledge for knowledge, for a position in which she, having knowledge, could sway the maker of policy; there had been a time she had believed she could say no.
For me, Kutath is the best part of the series, and the best writing so far from Cherryh, who I believe deserves all the awards and the nominations received for her prolific career. She demonstrates here control over both her characters and over the action, but most importantly she finds the Big Ideas, the ones that look at the human race as a whole and map our journey to the stars, asking what will we do when we get there: build or destroy? Or will we remain Earth bound to wither and disappear with a whimper like the e'lee:
Is that the end of all the races and the civilizations, and the dreams of the world, to be able to leave a few stones buried beneath the sands, to tell the Dark that we were here? Leave us out of your pan'en, she'pan of elee.
The mri have been portrayed for most of the series as inflexible in their traditions and death obsessed, but are they truly the reason all the planets in the path of their pilgrimage are left devoid of life?
From further research, I believe The Faded Sun is itself an episode of a larger space-opera that spawns more than twenty books written by Cherryh about the human expansion in the galaxy. I plan to check them out, probably going for Downbelow Station next.
August 21, 2023
Kutath finishes the fine Faded Sun trilogy; an early work by Cherryh from the late 1970s. This review is for the series as a whole, but with a focus on the last installment. Once again, this features our main protagonists Duncan and Niun, but with a little more from Melein; indeed, these three characters featured throughout the series, but each part highlighted one of the other. Dunan, the human, became entangled with the mri, the alien 'mercenaries' employed by the regul in their 40+ year long war with humanity.
In the first book, we learned quite a bit about the mri and indeed, alien sociology rose to prominence in this series, as Cherryh also develops the regul in fits and starts. Few authors are as gifted as Cherryh in developing alien cultures that are, well, alien, and for all that, infinitely relatable as the focus on the 'other' helped to probe questions on the human condition.
The regul, pacifists in military matters prefer contests over power and prestige, and they are as ruthless there as any sociopathic CEO you can point a finger at today. For over 2000 years, the regul used the mri as the pointy end of the stick for their colonial advances. When they started the war with humanity, the mri once again became the sharp end and the regul used them ruthlessly. The trilogy starts at the end of the war, where the the regul sued for peace and gave up many colonial planets to humanity, one being Kesrith, which also happened to be the 'home planet' of the mri.
The mri have been reduced to a handful of elders on the planet and one spaceship of survivors from the wars. In what seems like 'uncharacteristic' violent behavior, the regul destroy the mri ship and bomb the mri 'compound', seeking to eradicate the mri altogether. Ducan, a human 'agent', is sent as a liaison to the mri, and through his actions, manages to save two mri-- Nuin, a warrior, and Melein, a 'Sen' scholar and young 'mother' of the tribe. These three travel to the 'holy of holies' on the planet and recover and ancient mri artifact, which turns out to be the travel log of the mri.
It seems that for almost 100,000 years, the mri have traveled as a nomadic people, 'renting out' their military people to an entire range of civilizations. This started via an exodus from their original home planet on 'slow', generation ships, but faster as they met space travelling civilizations. While the first book details the mri, humans and regul on the latest 'homeworld' of the mri, the second consists of the long travel back to the mri homeland by Duncan, Niul and Melein, the third is on Kutath, the titular original homeland of the mri, and both the humans and regul sent warships after the mri and Duncan!
Overall, an outstanding feat of sociological science fiction and if you like that genre, I would highly recommend this. When this came out, it was alongside a flood of Star Wars knockoffs and such and was/is very original and unique. You really get a feel for the mri here and sympathize with their plight. Great stuff! 4 faded stars!!
In the first book, we learned quite a bit about the mri and indeed, alien sociology rose to prominence in this series, as Cherryh also develops the regul in fits and starts. Few authors are as gifted as Cherryh in developing alien cultures that are, well, alien, and for all that, infinitely relatable as the focus on the 'other' helped to probe questions on the human condition.
The regul, pacifists in military matters prefer contests over power and prestige, and they are as ruthless there as any sociopathic CEO you can point a finger at today. For over 2000 years, the regul used the mri as the pointy end of the stick for their colonial advances. When they started the war with humanity, the mri once again became the sharp end and the regul used them ruthlessly. The trilogy starts at the end of the war, where the the regul sued for peace and gave up many colonial planets to humanity, one being Kesrith, which also happened to be the 'home planet' of the mri.
The mri have been reduced to a handful of elders on the planet and one spaceship of survivors from the wars. In what seems like 'uncharacteristic' violent behavior, the regul destroy the mri ship and bomb the mri 'compound', seeking to eradicate the mri altogether. Ducan, a human 'agent', is sent as a liaison to the mri, and through his actions, manages to save two mri-- Nuin, a warrior, and Melein, a 'Sen' scholar and young 'mother' of the tribe. These three travel to the 'holy of holies' on the planet and recover and ancient mri artifact, which turns out to be the travel log of the mri.
It seems that for almost 100,000 years, the mri have traveled as a nomadic people, 'renting out' their military people to an entire range of civilizations. This started via an exodus from their original home planet on 'slow', generation ships, but faster as they met space travelling civilizations. While the first book details the mri, humans and regul on the latest 'homeworld' of the mri, the second consists of the long travel back to the mri homeland by Duncan, Niul and Melein, the third is on Kutath, the titular original homeland of the mri, and both the humans and regul sent warships after the mri and Duncan!
Overall, an outstanding feat of sociological science fiction and if you like that genre, I would highly recommend this. When this came out, it was alongside a flood of Star Wars knockoffs and such and was/is very original and unique. You really get a feel for the mri here and sympathize with their plight. Great stuff! 4 faded stars!!
March 28, 2019
Damn. C.J Cherryh is good. I hadn't heard of her before reading Kesrith (the first book in this series) but she is now on my list of Brilliant SF Authors Whose Entire Works I Must Track Down At Any Cost.
Kutath is the final book in her Faded Sun series, and I'm genuinely sad to have finished it - I didn't want to leave her memorable world and her scintillating characters.
Pulling off a consistently great trilogy isn't easy. Many authors have faltered, writing a very solid book or two and flubbing the ending, leaving their readers with a sad sense of unrealized potential, of a series that will now never get the send off it deserves.
Cherryh however dodges all such pitfalls. In The Faded Sun trilogy and Kutath she has written a classic SF epic and given it an ending that is truly worthy of a landmark series.
When this novel begins we are on the dying, desert planet of Kutath, origin world of the warrior Mri, the home Niun and Melein's ancestors left countless millennia ago.
Yep, for those with a nose for the influence of Arrakis there's a slight hint of Herbert here again - we're back on a desert world, with dust storms, black-wearing warrior folk, and nasty things lurking in the sands. Cherryh is no imitator though, and that is where the sandworm-y flavor of Kutath ends, providing a backdrop for a grand story of betrayal and survival.
Above Kutath Human and Regul warships float in space, locked in a more and more bitter dispute as to the future of the Mri. The genocidal Regul want to erase them from existence, while the humans are unsure whether to assist in genocide, abandon the Mri to the Regul, or act upon their more noble instincts to keep their former enemy from extinction.
In the deserts below Duncan struggles to find his old friends and be accepted by the Mri tribes, while Niun and Melein try to bring their countrymen together to face the threat above them. To survive the Mri will need to work together, confront an old ally and somehow survive the apocalypse waiting to rain down upon them.
The hints and mysteries of the prior two books - the hundreds of dead worlds that the Mri left behind them, their relationships with the species they have contracted with, the reasons for their astonishing rigidity - are all revealed, and these revelations are both surprising and fascinating.
The Faded Sun is satisfying, rich and fully realized SF.
So. Is Cherry's series good enough to be fairly compared to Dune, the masterwork her trilogy is most often likened to?
It is, and dare I say it, but Cherryh's Faded Sun is IMHO more consistent than the Herbert books with their (serious) diminishing returns as the series progresses (have you read Chapterhouse: Dune? I read it decades ago and the memory of it still chokes my inner reader with a cloud of dry, sense-dulling dust).
None of the three novels in this series best the original Dune, but as a whole I feel they present a stronger story than the broader Dune-universe books.
Comparisons aside, this is simply a great trilogy and wonderful SF achievement. C.J Cherryh is a writer of the first rank and the Faded Sun is simply a must-read for any science fiction fan.
Kutath is the final book in her Faded Sun series, and I'm genuinely sad to have finished it - I didn't want to leave her memorable world and her scintillating characters.
Pulling off a consistently great trilogy isn't easy. Many authors have faltered, writing a very solid book or two and flubbing the ending, leaving their readers with a sad sense of unrealized potential, of a series that will now never get the send off it deserves.
Cherryh however dodges all such pitfalls. In The Faded Sun trilogy and Kutath she has written a classic SF epic and given it an ending that is truly worthy of a landmark series.
When this novel begins we are on the dying, desert planet of Kutath, origin world of the warrior Mri, the home Niun and Melein's ancestors left countless millennia ago.
Yep, for those with a nose for the influence of Arrakis there's a slight hint of Herbert here again - we're back on a desert world, with dust storms, black-wearing warrior folk, and nasty things lurking in the sands. Cherryh is no imitator though, and that is where the sandworm-y flavor of Kutath ends, providing a backdrop for a grand story of betrayal and survival.
Above Kutath Human and Regul warships float in space, locked in a more and more bitter dispute as to the future of the Mri. The genocidal Regul want to erase them from existence, while the humans are unsure whether to assist in genocide, abandon the Mri to the Regul, or act upon their more noble instincts to keep their former enemy from extinction.
In the deserts below Duncan struggles to find his old friends and be accepted by the Mri tribes, while Niun and Melein try to bring their countrymen together to face the threat above them. To survive the Mri will need to work together, confront an old ally and somehow survive the apocalypse waiting to rain down upon them.
The hints and mysteries of the prior two books - the hundreds of dead worlds that the Mri left behind them, their relationships with the species they have contracted with, the reasons for their astonishing rigidity - are all revealed, and these revelations are both surprising and fascinating.
The Faded Sun is satisfying, rich and fully realized SF.
So. Is Cherry's series good enough to be fairly compared to Dune, the masterwork her trilogy is most often likened to?
It is, and dare I say it, but Cherryh's Faded Sun is IMHO more consistent than the Herbert books with their (serious) diminishing returns as the series progresses (have you read Chapterhouse: Dune? I read it decades ago and the memory of it still chokes my inner reader with a cloud of dry, sense-dulling dust).
None of the three novels in this series best the original Dune, but as a whole I feel they present a stronger story than the broader Dune-universe books.
Comparisons aside, this is simply a great trilogy and wonderful SF achievement. C.J Cherryh is a writer of the first rank and the Faded Sun is simply a must-read for any science fiction fan.
May 16, 2021
I devoured this trilogy, as I’ve devoured all of the books by CJ Cherryh that I’ve read. There’s no one quite like her in so many respects, able to write powerfully about the people caught up in the political, social, and diplomatic storms swirling around them. Her ability to create unique, vividly rendered, and wholly believable alien races and cultures is unparalleled. And she never gives anything away, masterfully making climactic moments feel earned and surprising.
I’m very glad that she is so prolific and that there’s a great many more books of hers to read.
I’m very glad that she is so prolific and that there’s a great many more books of hers to read.
September 3, 2024
This was a fabulous ending to the Faded Sun trilogy by Cherryh. I HIGHLY recommend these three books that only take a few days to finish but with a superb payoff. After the voyage in Shon'jir, we arrive to yet another desert world Kutath and discover that perhaps there are some original mri left. No spoilers because I want you to read and enjoy this. There is just so much action here and the stakes remain sky-high for the duration of the story. Once Cherryh got on a roll with Kesrith, the ball just kept rolling and the story kept improving. I can't believe that this one is not on more lists of great sci-fi and was never rewarded with even a Hugo or Nebula mention.
January 13, 2024
One of the most fascinating corners of Alliance-Union Universe yet.
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Reading updates for what little they are worth.
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Reading updates for what little they are worth.
April 20, 2022
I reiterate: 5 stars for the physical book; 2.5 stars for the Kindle version, as one could trip over errors.
This story takes place right after the events of Book Two. We are dealing with the four main species that have been highlighted in the first two books of the trilogy: humanity, the Regul, the Mri and the Dusei. Toxic mistrust abounds among the species.
The Mri are on their home planet of Kutath with the Dusei, trying to make accommodations with the indigenous Mri tribes on the world. What an inhospitable world it is, and in a dying star system to boot. The Mri tribes didn't exactly put out a "Welcome Home!" banner for Melein, Niun and Duncan, either.
Meanwhile, the humans and Regul ominously hover above in orbit. But don't think that this means they're doing nothing but drinking coffee in their respective ships. That would be too peaceful. Instead they are politicking, threatening and scheming among their own given species as well as against one or more of the others.
This book shined with outstanding characterization, just as in the first two of the trilogy. I really liked the three main characters, would love to have a pet Dus for my birthday, was disgusted by the politicking of the human commanders, and loathed, no...LOATHED, the Regul.
Fabulous trilogy!
This story takes place right after the events of Book Two. We are dealing with the four main species that have been highlighted in the first two books of the trilogy: humanity, the Regul, the Mri and the Dusei. Toxic mistrust abounds among the species.
The Mri are on their home planet of Kutath with the Dusei, trying to make accommodations with the indigenous Mri tribes on the world. What an inhospitable world it is, and in a dying star system to boot. The Mri tribes didn't exactly put out a "Welcome Home!" banner for Melein, Niun and Duncan, either.
Meanwhile, the humans and Regul ominously hover above in orbit. But don't think that this means they're doing nothing but drinking coffee in their respective ships. That would be too peaceful. Instead they are politicking, threatening and scheming among their own given species as well as against one or more of the others.
This book shined with outstanding characterization, just as in the first two of the trilogy. I really liked the three main characters, would love to have a pet Dus for my birthday, was disgusted by the politicking of the human commanders, and loathed, no...LOATHED, the Regul.
Fabulous trilogy!
March 10, 2016
*SPOILERS. A LOT OF THEM*
Let's get something out in the open right now, because it's going to color the whole rest of my review: I hate 'grim, noble warrior races'. Not just don't get into but actively loathe. The Dorsai bore me to tears, and I usually skim through the bits of the 'Dune' books with too much Fremen in them. Something about honor and inflexibility and the slavish devotion they inspire (often in the writer themselves) makes me sick to the stomach.
Probably says more about me than about the books in question.
That being said, lets talk about Mri. And Regul. And, even, Humans. Kutath is the third of the 'Faded Sun' Trilogy, which, word around the campfire has it, were meant to be a single novel. I believe it. And this review will serve as a review for the whole trilogy. So let's, as I said, talk about the Mri. This is CJ Cherryh doing what CJ Cherryh does best, pure, unadulterated Anthropology Porn, an ethnography of the Mri (and to a lesser extent, the Regul) where the major conflict isn't Man v Man but Culture v Culture, pitting the inflexible values of the violent, illiterate, intolerant, xenophobic Mri in a three-way power struggle between the mercenary Mri, their former employers the Regul and Humanity, each driven by their own cultural imperatives. And whatever feelings I may have about the individual cultures themselves, this is something that Cherryh has always done very, very well and this is no exception, with fully-fleshed out cultures and unique worldviews for the aliens and a conflicts that spring directly (and often surprisingly) from them. She is here and always will be a worldbuilder and her craft is on full display here. So let's dig into the players, shall we.
The Mri are... well, it's obvious that what they really are is Mommy's Favorites. They are Honorable, caste-based, nomadic, desert-dwelling, apparently-hypercompetant warriors in which the weak are destroyed, who also happen to be Pretty, Pretty, Golden Space Elves (I distrust any race of characters that are too beautiful) who spend a monumental amount of time being Misunderstood. That being said, Cherryh is too good a worldbuilder to even leave such an obvious Mary Sue race as this undeveloped and the ideas that form the basis of their culture, like The Shon'jir or the role of the Kel as the Face That Looks Outward (by the way, I think it says volumes about them that they keep those who deal with other cultures illiterate, and explains why I can't stand them), the levels of veiling and unveiling, and their inability to mix or collaborate with 'tsi'mri' 'Not People' are all of a piece and are all vital to the plot. The one major complaint about them, and thus my one major complaint with the series which is about them, is the Informed Attribute that drives the whole of the trilogy, their so-called skill at combat.
I say 'so-called' because we never really see it in action. We see a couple of duels between the mri themselves, but we never really see them in the field. They were, after all, supposed to be mercenaries in the wars between the Humans and Regul. And this is important. This is, in fact, what the series is about. They are supposed to be so dangerous that even the thought of the last two of them escaping is enough to make two mighty civilizations mobilize fleets, enough to spark the Regul on Kesrith and later Kutath, to commit genocide rather than let them fall into Human hands. All of which leaves me asking 'Why'? We never see the Mri take on another enemy by themselves and win. Never. The pacifist elee at the end maybe. But even when they're fighting off the massed fleets of Man and Regul, it's NOT THEM, its ancient AI's and weapons built by the elee (because as mentioned before, the mri are mostly illiterates) doing the fighting. And even then they lose. Hell, on Kesrith in the first book, the Regul, who are basically cowardly, stumpy, out-of-shape accountants, wipe them out without really losing a man. Damn near do the same in Kutath. And Humans are still worried about starting a war with the Regul after the Mri leave, so they're obviously a military force to be reckoned with. So, they needed Mri why again? We never see why they're worth bothering about in the least, honestly. Hell, it turns out that they didn't even kill all those worlds they're accused of destroying, those were just shitty worlds that their employers gave them on a really, really long Zensunni Migration. They are also the most well-developed, with all the details of day-to-day living mapped out in detail and named, the roles of the castes and the effects of their long migrations on their social structures. In fact, the interaction of two different mri cultures, the Voyagers who traveled the stars, of which are main characters are survivors, and the ones who stayed behind on their homeworld of Kutath, and the cultural drift between them, are some of the best parts of the third book.
The Regul are the Faded Sun Harkonnens. All Bad. 'Bad' here meaning 'incompatible with the mri'. They are also the most alien of the aliens (the Mri and their Elee cousins are basically just Different Humans with manes and nictitating membranes), a biologically hierarchical race with eidetic memory, they are also the most interesting and, I think, well thought out of the civilizations in these books. Cherryh really shines here, connecting their perfect memory with their inability to lie outright, which itself ties into their fear of the unknown and the new, their life cycle and method of reproduction with their social structure and hierarchy. A beautifully-woven whole, with actual different biology, they only sex upon changing over to adulthood and their relative mobility as young and adult shapes their whole outlook and society.
The Regul are, as mentioned about, also Quite Bad. Not Evil, this isn't a story about Good and Evil, but certainly Bad. Good, it is implied (and this might just be the impression I've gotten, so YMMV) is measured in the ability to be compatible with the Mri, something the mri themselves could never, ever do with any other civilization, but then they don't have to, they're already mri. Among the humans, the main human character, the near-cipher Sten Duncan, is our hero, one suspects, largely because he's the one who bonds so closely to them, even renouncing his humanity in favor of becoming part of their society (while also saving them as a species by retaining the human ability to negotiate, something they are forbidden to do), the most sympathetic of the scientists, named Boaz, a name she has in common with the father of American anthropology, is also the most sympathetic to the mri. The Regul, because of how different they are, are completely incompatible with the mri and thus remain the villains. Their main characters in Kutath die in a fiery crash and the species retreats from human space for fear of the Mri and of Imagination.
(There is another, hidden species towards the end, the Elee, who evolved on Kutath and are cousins to the Mri, but we are only given a short look at them towards the end through the intellectually incurious eyes of the Mri, so they don't really rate a mention here).
The Humans are, as Humans often are in stories where there are far more interesting aliens, rather bland and Generic Industrial West, mostly to give a contrast and a viewpoint for an audience who are much the same (lord knows I'm Western enough). However, even so Cherryh does have to shape them just a little, making the generation-long war they just emerged from the traumatic experience that shapes a great deal of both their personal and policy thinking. History matters on both a micro and macro level, and Cherryh knows this and uses this to move forward the Human part of the plot, even though this is mostly a story about Regul and Mri.
I'm not going to comment on the plot too much because most of it is just playing out the cascades of reactions by one culture to the other's actions, or more often, perceived actions.
In conclusion it is an interesting set of cultures, revealed skillfully by someone knows both how to pace and to worldbuild and for that alone it gets its stars. Probably more so if you stand the damn, dirty Mri, but definitely solidly in the mid-list of Cherryh's catalog.
Let's get something out in the open right now, because it's going to color the whole rest of my review: I hate 'grim, noble warrior races'. Not just don't get into but actively loathe. The Dorsai bore me to tears, and I usually skim through the bits of the 'Dune' books with too much Fremen in them. Something about honor and inflexibility and the slavish devotion they inspire (often in the writer themselves) makes me sick to the stomach.
Probably says more about me than about the books in question.
That being said, lets talk about Mri. And Regul. And, even, Humans. Kutath is the third of the 'Faded Sun' Trilogy, which, word around the campfire has it, were meant to be a single novel. I believe it. And this review will serve as a review for the whole trilogy. So let's, as I said, talk about the Mri. This is CJ Cherryh doing what CJ Cherryh does best, pure, unadulterated Anthropology Porn, an ethnography of the Mri (and to a lesser extent, the Regul) where the major conflict isn't Man v Man but Culture v Culture, pitting the inflexible values of the violent, illiterate, intolerant, xenophobic Mri in a three-way power struggle between the mercenary Mri, their former employers the Regul and Humanity, each driven by their own cultural imperatives. And whatever feelings I may have about the individual cultures themselves, this is something that Cherryh has always done very, very well and this is no exception, with fully-fleshed out cultures and unique worldviews for the aliens and a conflicts that spring directly (and often surprisingly) from them. She is here and always will be a worldbuilder and her craft is on full display here. So let's dig into the players, shall we.
The Mri are... well, it's obvious that what they really are is Mommy's Favorites. They are Honorable, caste-based, nomadic, desert-dwelling, apparently-hypercompetant warriors in which the weak are destroyed, who also happen to be Pretty, Pretty, Golden Space Elves (I distrust any race of characters that are too beautiful) who spend a monumental amount of time being Misunderstood. That being said, Cherryh is too good a worldbuilder to even leave such an obvious Mary Sue race as this undeveloped and the ideas that form the basis of their culture, like The Shon'jir or the role of the Kel as the Face That Looks Outward (by the way, I think it says volumes about them that they keep those who deal with other cultures illiterate, and explains why I can't stand them), the levels of veiling and unveiling, and their inability to mix or collaborate with 'tsi'mri' 'Not People' are all of a piece and are all vital to the plot. The one major complaint about them, and thus my one major complaint with the series which is about them, is the Informed Attribute that drives the whole of the trilogy, their so-called skill at combat.
I say 'so-called' because we never really see it in action. We see a couple of duels between the mri themselves, but we never really see them in the field. They were, after all, supposed to be mercenaries in the wars between the Humans and Regul. And this is important. This is, in fact, what the series is about. They are supposed to be so dangerous that even the thought of the last two of them escaping is enough to make two mighty civilizations mobilize fleets, enough to spark the Regul on Kesrith and later Kutath, to commit genocide rather than let them fall into Human hands. All of which leaves me asking 'Why'? We never see the Mri take on another enemy by themselves and win. Never. The pacifist elee at the end maybe. But even when they're fighting off the massed fleets of Man and Regul, it's NOT THEM, its ancient AI's and weapons built by the elee (because as mentioned before, the mri are mostly illiterates) doing the fighting. And even then they lose. Hell, on Kesrith in the first book, the Regul, who are basically cowardly, stumpy, out-of-shape accountants, wipe them out without really losing a man. Damn near do the same in Kutath. And Humans are still worried about starting a war with the Regul after the Mri leave, so they're obviously a military force to be reckoned with. So, they needed Mri why again? We never see why they're worth bothering about in the least, honestly. Hell, it turns out that they didn't even kill all those worlds they're accused of destroying, those were just shitty worlds that their employers gave them on a really, really long Zensunni Migration. They are also the most well-developed, with all the details of day-to-day living mapped out in detail and named, the roles of the castes and the effects of their long migrations on their social structures. In fact, the interaction of two different mri cultures, the Voyagers who traveled the stars, of which are main characters are survivors, and the ones who stayed behind on their homeworld of Kutath, and the cultural drift between them, are some of the best parts of the third book.
The Regul are the Faded Sun Harkonnens. All Bad. 'Bad' here meaning 'incompatible with the mri'. They are also the most alien of the aliens (the Mri and their Elee cousins are basically just Different Humans with manes and nictitating membranes), a biologically hierarchical race with eidetic memory, they are also the most interesting and, I think, well thought out of the civilizations in these books. Cherryh really shines here, connecting their perfect memory with their inability to lie outright, which itself ties into their fear of the unknown and the new, their life cycle and method of reproduction with their social structure and hierarchy. A beautifully-woven whole, with actual different biology, they only sex upon changing over to adulthood and their relative mobility as young and adult shapes their whole outlook and society.
The Regul are, as mentioned about, also Quite Bad. Not Evil, this isn't a story about Good and Evil, but certainly Bad. Good, it is implied (and this might just be the impression I've gotten, so YMMV) is measured in the ability to be compatible with the Mri, something the mri themselves could never, ever do with any other civilization, but then they don't have to, they're already mri. Among the humans, the main human character, the near-cipher Sten Duncan, is our hero, one suspects, largely because he's the one who bonds so closely to them, even renouncing his humanity in favor of becoming part of their society (while also saving them as a species by retaining the human ability to negotiate, something they are forbidden to do), the most sympathetic of the scientists, named Boaz, a name she has in common with the father of American anthropology, is also the most sympathetic to the mri. The Regul, because of how different they are, are completely incompatible with the mri and thus remain the villains. Their main characters in Kutath die in a fiery crash and the species retreats from human space for fear of the Mri and of Imagination.
(There is another, hidden species towards the end, the Elee, who evolved on Kutath and are cousins to the Mri, but we are only given a short look at them towards the end through the intellectually incurious eyes of the Mri, so they don't really rate a mention here).
The Humans are, as Humans often are in stories where there are far more interesting aliens, rather bland and Generic Industrial West, mostly to give a contrast and a viewpoint for an audience who are much the same (lord knows I'm Western enough). However, even so Cherryh does have to shape them just a little, making the generation-long war they just emerged from the traumatic experience that shapes a great deal of both their personal and policy thinking. History matters on both a micro and macro level, and Cherryh knows this and uses this to move forward the Human part of the plot, even though this is mostly a story about Regul and Mri.
I'm not going to comment on the plot too much because most of it is just playing out the cascades of reactions by one culture to the other's actions, or more often, perceived actions.
In conclusion it is an interesting set of cultures, revealed skillfully by someone knows both how to pace and to worldbuild and for that alone it gets its stars. Probably more so if you stand the damn, dirty Mri, but definitely solidly in the mid-list of Cherryh's catalog.
May 12, 2013
This trilogy is really one long book, broken up, I suppose for publishing convenience. It's truly a wonderful story, filled with strangeness, despair, and finally redemption and hope. Cherryh is a marvelous story teller, able to put you right into the minds of aliens, fill you up with strange worlds, all woven into the story, rich and full of nuance.
March 10, 2025
The choice was Suth’s. Suth’s body was making it. The swelling continued as one vestigial set of organs was absorbed, and the other began, in convulsive heaves of Suth’s body, to press down into the membrane covering the aperture . . . descended, evident as it would never be henceforth save in mating.I take back that bit about Cherryh's mercy.
Cherryh beats the Dune ripoff allegations. Thematically, narratively, it's all distinct. Duncan is not a messiah, fake or otherwise, he's just a weirdo who gets caught up in strange events. If anything, it is his everyman nature that makes the difference. The series as a whole, if I had to pick something, is about the difficulties of inter-cultural understanding. In Kesrith, human and regul tried to prevent the other from learning too much, lest it betray a weakness, and neither care much for the mri. Shon'jir depicts true understanding as requiring total and continuous immersion, not merely study and interaction. In Kutath, partial understandings lead to misunderstandings, distrust, and mistaken trust. While I might not agree with Cherryh's implied conclusions, the ultimate analysis is that the mri are not particularly war-like. It's the inability of others to understand them, and them to understand others, that leads to fear of the mri. This is summarized by Boaz' comment that it took until after the war for humans to realize the mri even had noncombatants. Even the elee, who lived side by side with the mri for hundreds of millennia, never came to really understand them. By becoming mri, Duncan becomes someone who is able to bridge the gap, and create true understanding. He is the metaphorical sword thrown between the two, caught and thrown back and forth. The mri could never understand others themselves, and the regul could not change themselves, with their unchanging memory. The story posits human nature as mutable, and that mutability as key to solving the dilemma. It took, too, Stavros' human-regul nature to make that throw of Duncan.
She works through this with an anthropological eye. There are a lot of great moments, like Hulagh second-guessing himself whether grey hair signifies human adulthood, or Niun internally speculating that Duncan shaves his face out of shame. The regul are especially important here, since their biological and cultural distance is much farther from the other two. In an ironic scene, Degas claims that though the regul are physically disgusting, they are far more amenable to human interaction than the mri, not knowing that as he speaks, Suth is coming to the conclusion that the human capacity to forget and imagine means that humans are fundamentally insane in a regul sense. Their segments are far stranger than the mri, and enhance the richness of the theme and the work as a whole. The viewpoint of every side is worked through, and none of them are really villains, thought the mri are arguably the heroes. Regul disregard for the lives of children, and mri eugenic selection of the same seem horrifying at first, until you consider the context of the work. Published a few years after the end of the Vietnam war, and featuring the end of a similar human-mri war, we can see how an outsider could see conscription of the young for war as not much different.
History and knowledge are also important, though more in the abstract. Cultural assumptions about this subject also colour the narrative. The regul revere adults because of their extensive memories: an old adult is a living repository of knowledge. Since memory is superior to records, they don't put much stock in libraries, and fail to understand what a boon the discarded library on Kesrith is to human researches, defeating their efforts to reveal as little as possible. In protecting what they saw as most important (the adults), they failed to consider what was instrumentally most important. Their realization that Kutath has extensive records of mri civilization, and that humans are capable of becoming like mri, also ends up fuelling their genocidal fears of mri and humanity. The mri keep extensive historical records, allowing Melein to trace her people's long journey, but neither human nor regul were aware of this. Even the elee see their hidden city as a valuable primarily as a record of the lost beauty of Kutath, even if it will never be read. The opening of the elee city, to interact again with the mri.
Kutath has a dying Earth vibe, unlike Kesrith, though it's a minor theme. It's a cold desert, inevitably winding down to a Mars-like death. The elee city has a Vancian decadence, the last redoubt of the pre-desert world. Cherryh doesn't go too much into the lore of it all, but by implication it seems that the mri are not so much special, as simply the single culture obstinate enough to survive. Obstinate about change too: the complete linguistic stasis of their holy language over hundreds of thousands of years is a plot point. The Kesrithi mri were able to adopt the dusei into their society, and though the Kutathi mri at first rejected them, like Duncan, they eventually accept them as well. The "mystery" of the dusei doesn't really come up. The extent of their intelligence and knowledge of others is left up in the air. The implication is made that Niun and Duncan's pair may have known from the beginning that the journey was to a new world. This isn't really a flaw, but my nerd-heart still wants more lore.
I have some quibbles. Unlike the previous two books, Kutath has points of view from many new characters, and the political manoeuvring can get complicated. Often I found myself wonder what the hell was going on, until later events clarified. The framing of the elee-mri battle is strange, as the elee are made out to be the assholes for defending themselves from invasion, since locking themselves away goes against the story's multicultural ethos. Stavros dies offscreen, which while understandable is more than a little disappointing. Even more bafflingly, Hulagh apparently kills himself??? What a waste of two good characters. Even so, these are pretty minor complaints overall.
Summary:
September 26, 2023
Humans, he had observed, recalled things in time-ahead. Imagination, they called this trait; and since they committed the insanity of remembering the future--Suth had been tempted to laughter when he first comprehended this insanity--the whole species was apt to irrational actions. The future, not existing, was remembered by each individual differently, and therefore they were apt to do individually irrational things. It was terrifying to know this tendency in one's allies--and worse yet not to know it, and not to know how it operated.
They might do anything. The mri suffered from similar future-memory. Presumably two such species thought they comprehended one another...if two species' future-memories could possibly coincide in any points; and that possibility threatened to unbalance a sane mind.
With Kutath, C.J. Cherryh concludes her Faded Sun trilogy. While the pacing suffers from too many desert treks described in painstaking, agonizing detail, the overall structure of the series possesses a satisfying conclusion. The Mexican standoff between Humans, Mri, and Regul over the desert-planet Kutath is portrayed well. Cherryh manages to delineate each species distinctly and memorably. The Regul and the Mri are not human and the humans aren't either of the other two. We can also add the empathic species of the dusei which continue to function as more than mere loyal, terrifying pets: Their ability to broadcast emotions provides a strategic advantage which comes to the fore in this final novel.
I thoroughly enjoyed this journey through this portion of space and time with these aliens. C.J. Cherryh is, if I haven't said it before, one of the finest science fiction authors ever to dip quill in ink.
He gathered a stylus from the board before him, held it between his palms and rolled it. "Observe, mates-of-mine, the flat face of the stylus. Where does it exist? Has it a place as it spins?"
"In fractional instants," Nagn said.
"Analogy," said Suth. "A model for imagination. I have found one. The place faces all directions for an instant, a blur of motion. Human minds are and are not so many faces that they seems ready to move in any direction. They are composite realities. They apparently face all directions simultaneously. This is human motive." He laid the stylus down. "They are facing us and the mri simultaneously."
"But action," said Tiag. "They cannot act in all directions forever."
"They act for themselves. What is of value to them?"
"Survival," said Nagn.
They might do anything. The mri suffered from similar future-memory. Presumably two such species thought they comprehended one another...if two species' future-memories could possibly coincide in any points; and that possibility threatened to unbalance a sane mind.
With Kutath, C.J. Cherryh concludes her Faded Sun trilogy. While the pacing suffers from too many desert treks described in painstaking, agonizing detail, the overall structure of the series possesses a satisfying conclusion. The Mexican standoff between Humans, Mri, and Regul over the desert-planet Kutath is portrayed well. Cherryh manages to delineate each species distinctly and memorably. The Regul and the Mri are not human and the humans aren't either of the other two. We can also add the empathic species of the dusei which continue to function as more than mere loyal, terrifying pets: Their ability to broadcast emotions provides a strategic advantage which comes to the fore in this final novel.
I thoroughly enjoyed this journey through this portion of space and time with these aliens. C.J. Cherryh is, if I haven't said it before, one of the finest science fiction authors ever to dip quill in ink.
He gathered a stylus from the board before him, held it between his palms and rolled it. "Observe, mates-of-mine, the flat face of the stylus. Where does it exist? Has it a place as it spins?"
"In fractional instants," Nagn said.
"Analogy," said Suth. "A model for imagination. I have found one. The place faces all directions for an instant, a blur of motion. Human minds are and are not so many faces that they seems ready to move in any direction. They are composite realities. They apparently face all directions simultaneously. This is human motive." He laid the stylus down. "They are facing us and the mri simultaneously."
"But action," said Tiag. "They cannot act in all directions forever."
"They act for themselves. What is of value to them?"
"Survival," said Nagn.
April 13, 2017
Quote for the book (page 93) gives some insight into the way the Regul think about Humans......"This was one profound difference between regul and human, that regul remembered only the past, which was observable and accurate as those who remembered it. Humans accustomed to the factual instabilities of their perceptions, even "lied," which was to give deliberate inaccuracy to memory, past or future. They existed in complete flux; their memories periodically purged themselves of facts: this was perhaps a necessary reflex in a species which remembered things that had not yet happened and which falsified what had occurred or might occur."
In this climax to the Faded Sun Trilogy, Sten Duncan, a human who has adopted the ways and culture of the Mri has arrived at Kutath with Niun and Melein, the last of the Mri mercenaries who were destroyed by their former employers, the Regul, out of fear that they would go to work for the humans who are now their wary allies after 40 years of war. It took them several years to get to Kutath followed by Humans and Regul alike. A game ensues in which the Regul want to destroy not only the surviving Mri but whatever Mri may be existing on Kutath as well. The humans have a moral choice to make as Duncan pleads the Mri's case to be left in peace. The story is a psychological study of the differences in the way the three races interact with one another.
In this climax to the Faded Sun Trilogy, Sten Duncan, a human who has adopted the ways and culture of the Mri has arrived at Kutath with Niun and Melein, the last of the Mri mercenaries who were destroyed by their former employers, the Regul, out of fear that they would go to work for the humans who are now their wary allies after 40 years of war. It took them several years to get to Kutath followed by Humans and Regul alike. A game ensues in which the Regul want to destroy not only the surviving Mri but whatever Mri may be existing on Kutath as well. The humans have a moral choice to make as Duncan pleads the Mri's case to be left in peace. The story is a psychological study of the differences in the way the three races interact with one another.
October 22, 2012
Stuff I Read - Faded Sun: Kutath by CJ Cherryh Review
So after probably far too long I finally shut the door on the Faded Sun Trilogy, with really nothing but the highest praises for the work. With Kutath, the series really brings itself to its only conclusion, and with a style and grace that I have rarely seen. There is a deft handling here of a great many different plotlines and ideas, all culminating and receiving just enough treatment, just enough attention to leave me wanting more but satisfied, finally, with where the characters end up and where the races involved end up at the end of the day. It is a very concise and interesting look at the nature of certain species and, though that science fiction, at the nature of humanity. And I must say that find myself drawn to this sort of story, to this sort of science fiction, not only because the story itself is great, but because there is this optimism that shows through, the idea that humanity can be more than we're seeing of it.
Perhaps that is the ultimate conceit of science fiction, and especially science fiction that I like, that optimism about humanity, that it can learn, that it can be better than it is now. Because I tend to think that humanity will improve, will become more understanding, more in touch with what we can be and less concerned with just what we were and trying to stick to that so rigidly. Like the best Star Treks, the Faded Sun trilogy posits that, while humanity has not even in the future completely escaped from its baser and more conservative ideals, there is a pervasive liberalism that wins the days, whereby we connect with out enemies and become friends, where we work together instead of at odds with those different than us, that we embrace such differences as the world and the universe offers.
That said, for most of this last book in the trilogy we are shown a tug-of-war between humanity being accepting and cooperative and humanity being reactionary and destructive. If anything, the Regul in the story represent humanity's reliance on only the past. The Regul have no imagination, no creativity. They exist only as reactionary, only on what they have learned. And, as such, they cannot adapt, cannot really cope with things that require forward thinking, that require them to act outside the scope of their experiences. They represent the side of humanity that is ugly and slow, unwilling to change. It is effectively done, and there is care taken to show that the Regul are not really evil, just unable to see past their own preconceptions. They hate what they do not understand, try to destroy what they cannot use.
Conversely, the Mri represent the progressive, the optimistic side of humanity. This might seem odd, given the Mri's social structure, which is still fairly rigid, but the Mri are, in the end, all about exploring the universe, spreading themselves into the galaxy. They might be soldiers, but they are soldiers so that they can go, so that they can see. And at every turn they are betrayed, are forced on. There seem to be very few people who can understand that, who can see that the Mri represent that part of humanity that doesn't hate, that is inquisitive and bold, resilient and independent. We get to see that with Duncan, in his transformation into Mri, that he isn't giving up his humanity so much as he is embracing those parts of it that work, that allow him to change.
And there is an elegance to that, to showing the two sides of humanity, the two faces. Neither are quite what humanity is, but one represents most of its positive aspects, the sense of justice, of right and wrong, of exploration and curiosity, while the other represents most of its negative aspects, the belief in absolutes, the deception, the betrayals, the unwillingness to change. And all this through this standoff on the planet, above the planet, where the humans find they don't want to destroy the Mri, that their ethics cannot allow genocide while the Regul care only for their own security. This all comes to a head with quite the stunning conclusion.
In short, the ending establishes the morality of the trilogy, because there is destruction on a large scale, and the author deftly brings together and resolves the various storylines. The Regul betray the humans, killing most of them, and try to destroy everything on Kutath. The humans that colluded with the Regul are punished through death, while those that sided with the Mri are largely either spared or, depending on the level of their collusion, die in fighting the Regul, who are also destroyed. The Mri and remaining humans come to an understanding and a new service is made, where the Mri agree to work for the humans for a while. It is quite interesting, that ending, and the prose really shows through there, is especially powerful.
Because in the end we learn that the Mri are not the savages that most took them for, are not the monsters that destroyed so many worlds, but are instead victims more often than not, have been turned on by their employers every time they sought work. And yet they still throw themselves out into the galaxy, they still cast out in exploration, hoping that the next time will be different. Despite everything, there is that optimism, that sense of morality, that there is no excuse for the kind of reactionary thinking of the Regul, that even after so many betrayals the Mri are willing to try again, to cast again. They will not stay on their world and bury themselves, but instead want to spread, want to see and by living gain a certain immortality. It is all excellent, and all that said, I give this final book of the trilogy a 9.5/10.
So after probably far too long I finally shut the door on the Faded Sun Trilogy, with really nothing but the highest praises for the work. With Kutath, the series really brings itself to its only conclusion, and with a style and grace that I have rarely seen. There is a deft handling here of a great many different plotlines and ideas, all culminating and receiving just enough treatment, just enough attention to leave me wanting more but satisfied, finally, with where the characters end up and where the races involved end up at the end of the day. It is a very concise and interesting look at the nature of certain species and, though that science fiction, at the nature of humanity. And I must say that find myself drawn to this sort of story, to this sort of science fiction, not only because the story itself is great, but because there is this optimism that shows through, the idea that humanity can be more than we're seeing of it.
Perhaps that is the ultimate conceit of science fiction, and especially science fiction that I like, that optimism about humanity, that it can learn, that it can be better than it is now. Because I tend to think that humanity will improve, will become more understanding, more in touch with what we can be and less concerned with just what we were and trying to stick to that so rigidly. Like the best Star Treks, the Faded Sun trilogy posits that, while humanity has not even in the future completely escaped from its baser and more conservative ideals, there is a pervasive liberalism that wins the days, whereby we connect with out enemies and become friends, where we work together instead of at odds with those different than us, that we embrace such differences as the world and the universe offers.
That said, for most of this last book in the trilogy we are shown a tug-of-war between humanity being accepting and cooperative and humanity being reactionary and destructive. If anything, the Regul in the story represent humanity's reliance on only the past. The Regul have no imagination, no creativity. They exist only as reactionary, only on what they have learned. And, as such, they cannot adapt, cannot really cope with things that require forward thinking, that require them to act outside the scope of their experiences. They represent the side of humanity that is ugly and slow, unwilling to change. It is effectively done, and there is care taken to show that the Regul are not really evil, just unable to see past their own preconceptions. They hate what they do not understand, try to destroy what they cannot use.
Conversely, the Mri represent the progressive, the optimistic side of humanity. This might seem odd, given the Mri's social structure, which is still fairly rigid, but the Mri are, in the end, all about exploring the universe, spreading themselves into the galaxy. They might be soldiers, but they are soldiers so that they can go, so that they can see. And at every turn they are betrayed, are forced on. There seem to be very few people who can understand that, who can see that the Mri represent that part of humanity that doesn't hate, that is inquisitive and bold, resilient and independent. We get to see that with Duncan, in his transformation into Mri, that he isn't giving up his humanity so much as he is embracing those parts of it that work, that allow him to change.
And there is an elegance to that, to showing the two sides of humanity, the two faces. Neither are quite what humanity is, but one represents most of its positive aspects, the sense of justice, of right and wrong, of exploration and curiosity, while the other represents most of its negative aspects, the belief in absolutes, the deception, the betrayals, the unwillingness to change. And all this through this standoff on the planet, above the planet, where the humans find they don't want to destroy the Mri, that their ethics cannot allow genocide while the Regul care only for their own security. This all comes to a head with quite the stunning conclusion.
In short, the ending establishes the morality of the trilogy, because there is destruction on a large scale, and the author deftly brings together and resolves the various storylines. The Regul betray the humans, killing most of them, and try to destroy everything on Kutath. The humans that colluded with the Regul are punished through death, while those that sided with the Mri are largely either spared or, depending on the level of their collusion, die in fighting the Regul, who are also destroyed. The Mri and remaining humans come to an understanding and a new service is made, where the Mri agree to work for the humans for a while. It is quite interesting, that ending, and the prose really shows through there, is especially powerful.
Because in the end we learn that the Mri are not the savages that most took them for, are not the monsters that destroyed so many worlds, but are instead victims more often than not, have been turned on by their employers every time they sought work. And yet they still throw themselves out into the galaxy, they still cast out in exploration, hoping that the next time will be different. Despite everything, there is that optimism, that sense of morality, that there is no excuse for the kind of reactionary thinking of the Regul, that even after so many betrayals the Mri are willing to try again, to cast again. They will not stay on their world and bury themselves, but instead want to spread, want to see and by living gain a certain immortality. It is all excellent, and all that said, I give this final book of the trilogy a 9.5/10.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 12, 2023
Overall a pretty solid scifi trilogy. Cherryh crafts nuanced aliens, in moments I was like "there are several alien races and humans still seem more relatable at times, what gives?" but I came to understand that's part of the appeal, the aliens are not "better humans" they are different beings with their vices and virtues.
November 19, 2025
CJ Cherryh walked so that Arkady Martine could run.
Sten Duncan's picture is next to 'gone native' in the dictionary.
Humans aren't actually the assholes of the universe.
In conclusion, read this trilogy.
Sten Duncan's picture is next to 'gone native' in the dictionary.
Humans aren't actually the assholes of the universe.
In conclusion, read this trilogy.
March 21, 2017
Well... I don't know what happened. Is it me or is it you, Kutath. I don't know.
It wasn't a very satisfying last book for me. I wasn't feeling the struggle at all. Some of the elements were really under-explained (like the Elee, Melein being the big boss She'pan over all the other She'pans - whyyy???).
I'm sad, because I loved the beginning of the trilogy. I rated the second book 3 stars, and I didn't like this one as much, so 2 Stars for you Kutath. At least Niun and Duncan's friendship didn't fizzle out, it was nice to see it grow. And I did like the last couple of pages, it was a good feeling to end the book on.
Even if I'm disappointed, I don't regret reading those books. I have the feeling that the characters and the world will stay with me for a long time.
It wasn't a very satisfying last book for me. I wasn't feeling the struggle at all. Some of the elements were really under-explained (like the Elee, Melein being the big boss She'pan over all the other She'pans - whyyy???).
I'm sad, because I loved the beginning of the trilogy. I rated the second book 3 stars, and I didn't like this one as much, so 2 Stars for you Kutath. At least Niun and Duncan's friendship didn't fizzle out, it was nice to see it grow. And I did like the last couple of pages, it was a good feeling to end the book on.
Even if I'm disappointed, I don't regret reading those books. I have the feeling that the characters and the world will stay with me for a long time.
March 20, 2021
This is where all the plot threads converge and things start to pop off. It’s a good conclusion with payoff for two full books of threads that come to a close. The tension is pretty palatable as you know one faction, at the very least, is not going to get what they want. More action happens in this thing than both the previous together, easily.
January 23, 2017
The final installment of The Faded Sun trilogy delivers long-sought answers and a satisfying conclusion. We explore the homeworld of the mri, and learn about their tragic history. The fate of the species hangs in the balance, as human and regul ponder the advisability of allowing such a people to live. Melien, Niun, and Sten retain center stage here, and work together to uncover the truth about the mri’s origins and then to prevent the treacherous regul from obliterating their entire species. Sten Duncan’s “hero’s tale” ends with triumph here as he finally receives the respect and recognition that he has strived for. Earning acceptance among the mri came with a price, and he is now more mri than human, but he serves as a bridge to bring understanding between the races.
My favorite part of the trilogy was watching the development of the socio-psychological uniqueness of Cherryh’s alien races. Cherryh’s humans, regul, and mri are so remarkably different in their cultures, physiologies, and psychologies, that the contrasting between them provides wonderful food for thought. Examining how humans behave through the eyes of an alien race is part of what makes reading this series worth reading. Like so many of the classic Sci-Fi novels, there is some real philosophy hidden in these pages. My favorite lines from the book revolve around the regul considering humans’ aptitude for imagination, or in their words, the “insanity of remembering the future”, which give rise to a “Species apt for irrational behavior since each individual remembers the future differently.”
The entire trilogy deserves praise as a serious philosophical look into culture, ethics, and meaning. What does it mean to be a sentient people? What would be the relation between our race and another sentient race that might not have similar thought processes or share core moral philosophies? Fun to think about.
My favorite part of the trilogy was watching the development of the socio-psychological uniqueness of Cherryh’s alien races. Cherryh’s humans, regul, and mri are so remarkably different in their cultures, physiologies, and psychologies, that the contrasting between them provides wonderful food for thought. Examining how humans behave through the eyes of an alien race is part of what makes reading this series worth reading. Like so many of the classic Sci-Fi novels, there is some real philosophy hidden in these pages. My favorite lines from the book revolve around the regul considering humans’ aptitude for imagination, or in their words, the “insanity of remembering the future”, which give rise to a “Species apt for irrational behavior since each individual remembers the future differently.”
The entire trilogy deserves praise as a serious philosophical look into culture, ethics, and meaning. What does it mean to be a sentient people? What would be the relation between our race and another sentient race that might not have similar thought processes or share core moral philosophies? Fun to think about.
September 10, 2022
I fought desperately to enjoy this series. I struggled with the first, (kind of) enjoyed the second, and had assumed this third would really deliver. Unfortunately, it was probably my least favorite of the series. We still get some interesting reflections on the misunderstandings between the different cultures Cherryh has created here, and her treatment of the whole scenario is remarkably unsentimental (especially for something written in the 70s!) This is a series, ultimately, about 3 races that just can't get along or understand each other, which has some nice insights into all of them, while not entirely taking any of their sides. And in theory there's a lot here I would really like.
That said, the third book remained consistently overwritten. It felt flabby and murky--and the problem got worse because we got half a dozen new POV characters, who mostly felt they didn't need to be there. What exactly were they doing for so much of the book? There's more action here, and more going on, but I felt myself drifting further and further from the characters. And the scenario itself is fairly standard. In the end (spoiler?) the three races go at each other, but there are very few set pieces or emotionally resonant moments, just a sense of characters sort of getting lost in larger events as fights start and resolve suddenly, usually just in a few paragraphs; and that's when we're not caught in yet another long negotiation or ritual which, strangely, seemed often to cover familiar ground.
I would say that, while this series frequently impressed me, I almost never enjoyed it. In theory, what Cherryh is doing here is very next level and offers a much more nuanced perspective than most SF, especially compared to more didactic work published over the last few years--but then those nice ideas are let down by her ponderous, foggy execution, and characters who were psychologically interesting but (in the moment) mostly felt wooden and dead. Why I pushed through with so much determination is still sort of unclear to me. I still feel this weird interest in Cherryh's writing, and it's possible I'll even try Cyteen someday. But I'm not looking forward to it!
That said, the third book remained consistently overwritten. It felt flabby and murky--and the problem got worse because we got half a dozen new POV characters, who mostly felt they didn't need to be there. What exactly were they doing for so much of the book? There's more action here, and more going on, but I felt myself drifting further and further from the characters. And the scenario itself is fairly standard. In the end (spoiler?) the three races go at each other, but there are very few set pieces or emotionally resonant moments, just a sense of characters sort of getting lost in larger events as fights start and resolve suddenly, usually just in a few paragraphs; and that's when we're not caught in yet another long negotiation or ritual which, strangely, seemed often to cover familiar ground.
I would say that, while this series frequently impressed me, I almost never enjoyed it. In theory, what Cherryh is doing here is very next level and offers a much more nuanced perspective than most SF, especially compared to more didactic work published over the last few years--but then those nice ideas are let down by her ponderous, foggy execution, and characters who were psychologically interesting but (in the moment) mostly felt wooden and dead. Why I pushed through with so much determination is still sort of unclear to me. I still feel this weird interest in Cherryh's writing, and it's possible I'll even try Cyteen someday. But I'm not looking forward to it!
March 13, 2019
As usual, notes to self (but everyone's welcome to them of course).
This third book in the trilogy was the most difficult for me to get through - fun at times, kinda slow and boring often. It does sum up to an "ok" in the end, all things brought together. The parts I most valued are the description of the profound differences in the three cultures, especially Regel's inability to imagine the future, Mri's pathological inability to compromise.
Despite being already familiar with the world and the story, I was often bored in places.
I did not understand the motivation of Mri, still, after all exposition and even an attempted explicit explanation in the end. I'll try to read the reviews and summaries, perhaps I'll get it. Mri appear terminally inflexible, absolutely selfish. They are a race of psycopaths. In the end there is an attempt to explain that they value Journey perhaps? But that did not strike me as satisfactory answer: they never feel any trace of remorse about anything they do. They invaded another race at their home planet because they wanted something, slaughtered a lot of them because they were in the way. And they profoundly do not see anything wrong in that.
Regel looked more interesting in this book than in the first two. In fact, I could get on board with their worldview if not for the casual killing off of the young. Regel seem to be a genuinely peaceful and profoundly reasonable race but they do not consider their young to have a right to live despite the young being obviously sentient. The adults are more mentally capable but the young are very resourcesful - much more so than human children, they are like a separate race in themselves, and Regel are happy to deal with other races but apparently not with their own young. In a way, they are psycopaths too.
This third book in the trilogy was the most difficult for me to get through - fun at times, kinda slow and boring often. It does sum up to an "ok" in the end, all things brought together. The parts I most valued are the description of the profound differences in the three cultures, especially Regel's inability to imagine the future, Mri's pathological inability to compromise.
Despite being already familiar with the world and the story, I was often bored in places.
I did not understand the motivation of Mri, still, after all exposition and even an attempted explicit explanation in the end. I'll try to read the reviews and summaries, perhaps I'll get it. Mri appear terminally inflexible, absolutely selfish. They are a race of psycopaths. In the end there is an attempt to explain that they value Journey perhaps? But that did not strike me as satisfactory answer: they never feel any trace of remorse about anything they do. They invaded another race at their home planet because they wanted something, slaughtered a lot of them because they were in the way. And they profoundly do not see anything wrong in that.
Regel looked more interesting in this book than in the first two. In fact, I could get on board with their worldview if not for the casual killing off of the young. Regel seem to be a genuinely peaceful and profoundly reasonable race but they do not consider their young to have a right to live despite the young being obviously sentient. The adults are more mentally capable but the young are very resourcesful - much more so than human children, they are like a separate race in themselves, and Regel are happy to deal with other races but apparently not with their own young. In a way, they are psycopaths too.
May 13, 2011
C.J. Cherryh is like...flourless chocolate cake. It's good, it's rich, and very very dense. There's always so much going on that isn't action or dialogue, but introspection; and she is definitely one of the top alien-world builders out there. That being said, I'd say the Faded Sun Trilogy doesn't rank as high as some of her other works. Her society she set up in book one is super interesting, but didn't go in the action-packed direction I was hoping it would go. The third book of the trilogy had two twists that felt like they should have happened earlier to contribute more to the story; which just kind of ends about 3 pages before the back cover; I suppose there just wasn't enough tension in the book for me and it fell a bit flat. ohai ending! like this review. the end.
October 7, 2014
I've been rationing the CJ Cherryh novels that I haven't read yet... otherwise I would consume them in no time at all.
March 13, 2025
Given the improvement in how I felt about this trilogy between books one and two, I was kind of shocked by how disengaged I was by the third book. There are excellent summaries online that make what happens seem exciting, bringing all the good ideas of the book together in the end. Unfortunately, a lot of things get in the way of that level of satisfaction for me.
I've come to appreciate characters going away or dying. I feel like epic sci-fi and fantasy books, when well written, can successfully shift between three or even four perspectives, but any more than that and what is meant to be escapist fare becomes more challenging to follow. The narrative shifts within chapters, to the point where I couldn't tell whether I was following the progress of the humans, the mri, or the regul...which is pretty terrible since all three factions were pretty well delineated in the first two books. And there are a LOT of new characters to keep track of. Niun, Duncan and Melein are no longer the sole focus of the book. I know sci-fi and fantasy fanatics love this stuff, but it was difficult for me to feel engaged with any of the new characters while also feeling less engaged with the existing ones.
And while I'm fine with sci-fi books that are heavy on ideas and less reliant on action, if your book is going to involve interspecies warfare and a warrior caste, have them, you know, DO THAT! Instead, there is not only debate between the three main factions involved but WITHIN those factions. It's a lot of talking and deciding what to do. A LOT. Like, more than I usually encounter, particularly in a book this long.
It's not that this series is without merit, but it also proves to me why certain sci-fi classics have managed to stand the test of time and remain both interesting and great works of literature and while others might not land at the top of even the most ardent sci-fi fans' minds. This is one of those series that's for the real nerds out there, the ones that love to brag about the more obscure choices they've read. If anything, this made me appreciate the evolution of sci-fi literature over time and the confidence in editors to push back without dumbing things down.
I think I'm overly critical because I've kept this on my shelf for years and really, really wanted to like this series more than I did, but at least I have perspective from one of the early female pioneers of science fiction literature. That counts a lot for me.
I've come to appreciate characters going away or dying. I feel like epic sci-fi and fantasy books, when well written, can successfully shift between three or even four perspectives, but any more than that and what is meant to be escapist fare becomes more challenging to follow. The narrative shifts within chapters, to the point where I couldn't tell whether I was following the progress of the humans, the mri, or the regul...which is pretty terrible since all three factions were pretty well delineated in the first two books. And there are a LOT of new characters to keep track of. Niun, Duncan and Melein are no longer the sole focus of the book. I know sci-fi and fantasy fanatics love this stuff, but it was difficult for me to feel engaged with any of the new characters while also feeling less engaged with the existing ones.
And while I'm fine with sci-fi books that are heavy on ideas and less reliant on action, if your book is going to involve interspecies warfare and a warrior caste, have them, you know, DO THAT! Instead, there is not only debate between the three main factions involved but WITHIN those factions. It's a lot of talking and deciding what to do. A LOT. Like, more than I usually encounter, particularly in a book this long.
It's not that this series is without merit, but it also proves to me why certain sci-fi classics have managed to stand the test of time and remain both interesting and great works of literature and while others might not land at the top of even the most ardent sci-fi fans' minds. This is one of those series that's for the real nerds out there, the ones that love to brag about the more obscure choices they've read. If anything, this made me appreciate the evolution of sci-fi literature over time and the confidence in editors to push back without dumbing things down.
I think I'm overly critical because I've kept this on my shelf for years and really, really wanted to like this series more than I did, but at least I have perspective from one of the early female pioneers of science fiction literature. That counts a lot for me.
November 11, 2024
I really wanted this one to be an absolute 5 star book. I think it fell a little short of that, but was still a satisfying end to the trilogy. I gave it 5 stars because the series as a whole deserves more than 4 stars. Probably my favorite series I've read since Foundation.
As I've stated in my reviews of the previous books, I love the alien minds that Cherryh has created. One species that never changes because they never forget. One species that never changes due to rigid cultural expectations. One species that forgets, and because of that can mold themselves to any scenario. It's a unique take on the indomitable human spirit without overly praising humans. The regul see the malleability of humans as a flaw in the race, but one that makes them unpredictable. Cherryh illustrates this perfectly with Duncan's transformation in stark reference to the relatively static characters from the regul and mri.
Another thing I loved about this book is Cherryh's lack of bias. None of the species are good or evil. All three simply are what they are. She almost teases you into thinking the mri are good and the regul are evil. But then you remember that mri are the most efficient known killers in the universe and the regul are operating based on centuries of evidence. Humans resonate with parts of both species, stuck in the middle.
In the end, you come to understand the motivations of all three species and it is hard to fault any of them for their actions. All three sides working with incomplete data trying to outguess minds they do not understand.
As I've stated in my reviews of the previous books, I love the alien minds that Cherryh has created. One species that never changes because they never forget. One species that never changes due to rigid cultural expectations. One species that forgets, and because of that can mold themselves to any scenario. It's a unique take on the indomitable human spirit without overly praising humans. The regul see the malleability of humans as a flaw in the race, but one that makes them unpredictable. Cherryh illustrates this perfectly with Duncan's transformation in stark reference to the relatively static characters from the regul and mri.
Another thing I loved about this book is Cherryh's lack of bias. None of the species are good or evil. All three simply are what they are. She almost teases you into thinking the mri are good and the regul are evil. But then you remember that mri are the most efficient known killers in the universe and the regul are operating based on centuries of evidence. Humans resonate with parts of both species, stuck in the middle.
In the end, you come to understand the motivations of all three species and it is hard to fault any of them for their actions. All three sides working with incomplete data trying to outguess minds they do not understand.
September 6, 2020
What I love about really good 1970s Sci-Fi is the lack of reliance on the technology and the action. Just a good story driven by the characters and ideas, even if for some of the characters that idea is just to not be the stereotype. The Faded Sun trilogy is no exception. There is tech and there is action, but they are not the focus. The characters take some warming-up to, and it's a little up in the air who are the good guys, the bad guys, and the truly bad guys. There is a race of beings who cannot imagine the future but also cannot forget anything from their past, there is a race of extraordinary humanoids turned mercenary, and then there is us (presumably the humans of the future), who are denigrated for, among other things, our imperfect memories and penchant for lying in any form. There is some insightful philosophy, some excellent friendships forged, and a race of people on the verge of genocide in what is otherwise a semi-dark, post-worlds war universe trying to sort out what's left of itself. This is one of those stories that hinges on the unwritten notion that if you abandon your morals in times of extreme circumstances, were they ever truly your morals in the first place?
December 12, 2023
On Kutath, Maelanie is trying to unite the mri tribes so they can kill everybody, the regul are trying to kill the mri and trick the hoomans, and the hoomans are trying to be friends with everybody. Duncan walks through the desert and almost dies, again. There is some shooting and stabbing and splosions and such, but mostly this book is about the political machinations within each of the three groups. The mri are interesting because they have the most at stake and the hardest path. The regul are interesting because they are alien and their life cycle is explored. The hoomans are more of the same old "scientists are logical and super smart so they are right, soldiers be big dummies want to shoot everything". Only the soldiers who side with scientists are worth saving.
I am fine with how the trilogy ends. Did not care much for the eleet, considered them a waste of time and a rather ham-fisted attempt at making some kind of statement. It's the beautiful rich people living in the castle against the tough smelly people living off the land. Overall I enjoyed the books but am glad it is over. I don't think Duncan could survive another walk through the desert.
I am fine with how the trilogy ends. Did not care much for the eleet, considered them a waste of time and a rather ham-fisted attempt at making some kind of statement. It's the beautiful rich people living in the castle against the tough smelly people living off the land. Overall I enjoyed the books but am glad it is over. I don't think Duncan could survive another walk through the desert.
November 22, 2025
Belly flop complete. The death blow is the introduction of tons of new characters, which I had trouble investing in the main characters to begin with. The worst character by far is Melein. Cherryh as a female writer should be able to really blow this character out, but she is just so weak it’s like she’s non-existent. Like I mentioned, the fact that Duncan was adopted by the Mri is bizarre; when I look as stellar examples of the outsider becoming the insider I think of Shogun or Dune. The same amount of word count was dedicated to the process in all three of these books, but the results are laughably different. The Mri are not a great alien race as well - we hear how fearsome they are as fighters and never see anything to demonstrate that in a substantial fashion.
The bright spots of the story are the juxtaposition that the Mri and the Regul provide to the humans. Mri represent the war mongering side of the human race and the Regul represent the manipulating side. Cherryh has some nice commentary in the final book here. The one thing that would probably get me to read another Cherryh book are the Regul; a well developed alien race and the story really hummed when they were on the page. Otherwise this series was kind of a disappointment.
The bright spots of the story are the juxtaposition that the Mri and the Regul provide to the humans. Mri represent the war mongering side of the human race and the Regul represent the manipulating side. Cherryh has some nice commentary in the final book here. The one thing that would probably get me to read another Cherryh book are the Regul; a well developed alien race and the story really hummed when they were on the page. Otherwise this series was kind of a disappointment.
March 29, 2022
"There was no hope, no miracle, only this ugly act that was better than other choices.
Their past, Boaz had called it, killing the past. He looked about him; reckoned there was for this barren, dying world... little else left.
He shook his head, set his eyes on the city whose name he did not even know, and walked."
I often find that the last third of a C.J. Cherryh novel is the best bit. This quirk is doubly the case in Kutath, which forms the final chapter of her Faded Sun trilogy. The first book was slow, the second was a little better, but it's this one where everything comes together. Melein is an unhinged girlboss, simultaneously a strong leader and an insane fanatic. The friendship between Niun and Duncan is excellent. The Regul-Human politicking is, unsurprisingly, very good; Cherryh has a real talent for writing tight political thrillers within a sci-fi setting.
In summary, this is an excellent end to a strong trilogy.
Their past, Boaz had called it, killing the past. He looked about him; reckoned there was for this barren, dying world... little else left.
He shook his head, set his eyes on the city whose name he did not even know, and walked."
I often find that the last third of a C.J. Cherryh novel is the best bit. This quirk is doubly the case in Kutath, which forms the final chapter of her Faded Sun trilogy. The first book was slow, the second was a little better, but it's this one where everything comes together. Melein is an unhinged girlboss, simultaneously a strong leader and an insane fanatic. The friendship between Niun and Duncan is excellent. The Regul-Human politicking is, unsurprisingly, very good; Cherryh has a real talent for writing tight political thrillers within a sci-fi setting.
In summary, this is an excellent end to a strong trilogy.
April 4, 2024
The Faded Sun trilogy built up over the course of the books like a campfire, tentatively at first but gathering heat and light as more was added to it. Where the first and second book spent a fair amount of time establishing the key players and the central "conflict" the third book veered off course just enough to make it feel fresh and exciting. It was a rewarding final book after the genocide of Kesrith and transformation of Shon'jir bringing elements of them together and fusing them into a more complete whole.
It was really interesting to read a book where humans weren't necessarily the heroes or protagonists. Ms. Cherryh's introduction of the Mri and Regul as alien species with different relationships and cultural values gave her a way to force us as readers to look at our values in a fresh light. It was interesting to consider those things I'm attached to through the lens of a fictional world and people.
It was really interesting to read a book where humans weren't necessarily the heroes or protagonists. Ms. Cherryh's introduction of the Mri and Regul as alien species with different relationships and cultural values gave her a way to force us as readers to look at our values in a fresh light. It was interesting to consider those things I'm attached to through the lens of a fictional world and people.
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