Pre09:
Characters: Almost memorable. But not really.
Plot: Slow as shit. Here's what lost me.
Style: Pretty standard sci-fi. Nothing really stood out. ( )

I usually hesitate to give star ratings to books I read long ago. But I wanted to make sure my recommendation and praise were on record here.

This is excellent science fiction. Cherryh's great achievement here is the creation of not one, but two mindsets that are believable, yet pervasively alien. The mri and the regul are so consistent and convincing -- not to mention interesting -- that this trilogy is still the first book that comes to mind when discussing beautifully crafted alien races in fiction. ( )

These three books were as dry as the deserts they take place in. I kept feeling like I was coming in in the middle of the story and couldn't quite get a fix on who the characters were and why they acted the way they did. The Mri could have been a fascinating race of people but it seemed like not everything was revealed to the reader. The story begins at the end of a 40 year war and the characters refer often to past battles, slaughters and injustices that happened but never explain what exactly took place. Maybe that's just the authors style to keep the reader as uninformed as some of the characters but I like to have a lot more detail in my stories. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1077101.ht...

Having rather bounced off both Cherryh's Hugo winners, Cyteen and Downbelow Station, I'm glad to report that I found the Faded Sun trilogy much easier to get into. She slightly lost me at the climax of the last book, but apart from that I found them all very readable. It's a story of questing for destiny and of relationships between three different species, humans, the warrior mri, and the regul. Cherryh gives her aliens an effective and convincingly different psychology, particularly by having us follow the human characters who try to get closest to them.

All three books pass the Bechdel test, if we allow it to apply to female aliens: Melein, a mri priestess, is one of the key characters and she confronts other priestesses at several crucial points (notably the climax of the second book). ( )

I currently re-read this book, and it keeps its place as my favorite science fiction novel of all time. A few of the things I particularly like about it: First, the characters. Cherryh taks a good deal of time developing her characters to the point that you actually CARE about them. Many authors (sci fi and otherwise) are too concerned with the plot to let the reader get to know the characters, and so when it comes down to plot crunch-time, nobody really cares what happens. Cherryh is very much the opposite. You care what happens to Niun and Duncan, you feel their emotions, you fear, cry, love, and laugh with them because Cherryh takes the time to let you into their hearts and minds. The friendship between Niun and Duncan feels so very real, because we see from the point of view of both, and understand how their minds slowly move together towards that point. Second, the emphasis on the alien cultures. Unlike in Star Trek, where all the alien cultures are just humans with a little body paint, the mri and the regul both are completely alien. While the mri at least are vaguely humanoid, both are very alien in their thought-processes, thinking in ways that humans find difficult or impossible to follow. Cherryh does a brilliant job in this book of describing and letting the reader into the cultures of both the mri and the regul. Fascinating! Three: The fact that the book is not resolved by Niun discovering he would be better off human, and assimilating. I've read so many books where the alien character is assimilated by the human character, with the feeling that human culture is better anyway, so of course it will win out. This book is the opposite, and runs in the face of that xenophobic cultural bigotry. Duncan becomes mri. Stavros is well on his way to becoming regul. I love the idea from this book that cultural identity is not just skin deep, but comes with a certain thought process and behavioral patterns - the fact that Duncan is mri is recognized both by the mri themselves, and by the regul - it is only the humans, set in their shallow ways, who refuse to see this change.

In all, this is my favorite book in the science fiction genre. ( )