The Faded Sun Trilogy

I finished reading this book last fall — so bear with me if I don’t get all the details exactly right.

Brief Synopsis

The Fade Sun Trilogy is a collection of three novels by C.J. Cherryh — a lot of classic SF that I’ve been reading is like that (I’m guessing it was the style at the time).

They tell the tale of the last two members of a proud an noble race, the “mri.”  The mri are a warrior space-faring species, used exclusively as the mercenaries and bodyguards of a race of creatures called the “Regul” that are have been fighting a war with the forces of Earth for nearly four decades.

The books pick up as the war has ended — Earth has won, the Regul are defeated, and the noble mri have been almost completely eradicated, after having been used as cannon fodder in the last few years of the Earth-Regul war.

The books tell the tale of the remaining members of the mri as they slowly die out, and of one man, Sten Duncan, who is tasked to investigate the mri and who eventually “goes native.”

My Thoughts

Well, it’s classic C.J. Cherryh, and I love it for that.  The mri are like one of C.J. Cherry’s many inceptions of the tall “fair folk” present in her books, be they elves in her fantasy novels, or a species like the “qhal” in The Morgaine Saga.  They are noble and superior to humans, but small in number and in “time left.”  (Kind like the Jedi, I guess.)

There are also many similarities between the mri and the “Fremen” in Frank Herbert’s famous Dune series of books.  They’re emotionless (or just hide their emotions well).  Their existence is hard and daily life is a struggle, leading them to be tough as iron (because of the condition of the planet they have settled on).  They favor simple weapons and hand-to-hand combat but are very proficient in modern technology, though they eschew any technology that might make their life easier.

All in all, a good read!