Rating: 
Summary: Slow warm up, but very strong finish
Review: "The Faded Sun" trilogy suffers from the lamentable pitfalls of Cherryh's writing, but it also exemplifies what she is capable of at her best.Cherryh's main weakness as a writer is redundancy, and the first book and a half suffer from this terribly. At her best, Cherryh lets the intricacies of her characters emerge in dialogue. At her worst, she spends the first few pages of every short chapter repeating the same descriptions of her main characters we found in each preceding chapter. (As I've written elsewhere, it smacks of a writer "warming up" without reading through the previous day's work.) This weakness especially affects this trilogy, because its brilliance -- as the other reviews describe -- is that Cherryh succeeds in maintaining a believable and complex interaction among four completely different species/cultures with a depth which challenges any other scifi or fantasy book ever written. The non human species are not just dressed up humans of foreign cultures, nor are they part of a symbolic mythology or allegorical structure. She has succeeded in making them believable, and, well, fascinating, occasionally inspiring, and not infrequently confounding. At the same time, her set up of these species is long-winded and repetitive. The trilogy is approximately 800 pages long, and the first 400 pages are really interminably boring. Things start to take off around page 460, and from 460 until the end this is among the greatest science fiction books of all time. Instead of long paragraphs repeating descriptions of the species, characteristic of the first half, Cherryh allows dialogue and actions to demonstrate and cultures of her characters. If only she had done this sooner. For those who have read the Morgaine 4-book series, the writing pattern is about the same. There, the first book set the characters up, quite repetitively, the second book slowed down to molasses, and right when you were about to give up, the third and fourth books took off with the characters and became engrossing. "The Faded Sun" follows that pattern, but due to its length, the slow warm up is that much harder to get through, but the payoff in the strong second half is that much more rewarding.
Rating:
Summary: Slow warm up, but very strong finish
Review: "The Faded Sun" trilogy suffers from the lamentable pitfalls of Cherryh's writing, but it also exemplifies what she is capable of at her best. Cherryh's main weakness as a writer is redundancy, and the first book and a half suffer from this terribly. At her best, Cherryh lets the intricacies of her characters emerge in dialogue. At her worst, she spends the first few pages of every short chapter repeating the same descriptions of her main characters we found in each preceding chapter. (As I've written elsewhere, it smacks of a writer "warming up" without reading through the previous day's work.) This weakness especially affects this trilogy, because its brilliance -- as the other reviews describe -- is that Cherryh succeeds in maintaining a believable and complex interaction among four completely different species/cultures with a depth which challenges any other scifi or fantasy book ever written. The non human species are not just dressed up humans of foreign cultures, nor are they part of a symbolic mythology or allegorical structure. She has succeeded in making them believable, and, well, fascinating, occasionally inspiring, and not infrequently confounding. At the same time, her set up of these species is long-winded and repetitive. The trilogy is approximately 800 pages long, and the first 400 pages are really interminably boring. Things start to take off around page 460, and from 460 until the end this is among the greatest science fiction books of all time. Instead of long paragraphs repeating descriptions of the species, characteristic of the first half, Cherryh allows dialogue and actions to demonstrate and cultures of her characters. If only she had done this sooner. For those who have read the Morgaine 4-book series, the writing pattern is about the same. There, the first book set the characters up, quite repetitively, the second book slowed down to molasses, and right when you were about to give up, the third and fourth books took off with the characters and became engrossing. "The Faded Sun" follows that pattern, but due to its length, the slow warm up is that much harder to get through, but the payoff in the strong second half is that much more rewarding.
Rating: 
Summary: Kept my interest even though it had some disappointments
Review: 1)Wonderful alien creation and character development 2)Unpredictable but engrossing and believable plot 3)My only complaint is that my typical experience with female authors is they tend to shy away from a lot of opportunities for action to enhance suspense and rely more on relational situations to enhance suspense. This is very true of this author and in this grouping of stories. She creates this awesome warrior race but I can remember only three instances between all three books that had any chasing, figthing, etc. Really only one of those scenes made use of the awesome warrior race and that scene lasted only about one page. 4) A lot of potential to make this a five stars, but the author wimped out a bit.
Rating: 
Summary: Star Trek eat your heart out
Review: Are you sick of aliens being portrayed as just extremes of violence, greed, logic etc and want something truly ALEIN? Then this is the perfect book for you (along with C.J. Cherryh's other books) Her writing is vivid, and the civilizations she creates are so far divorced from humanity every few chapters you have to just stop and quote Keanau Reeves. In the most basic of terms it is the story of the death of a people, the relics of a human alien war, and the journey of Sten Duncan from human to something far far removed from Earth and humanity in general. A fantastic read and a must have for science fiction readers.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful assemblage of a compelling story
Review: Cherryh is an incredible creatrix of alien cultures and worlds. Here she showcases her ability to toss aside humanocentric assumptions and come up with completely fresh ones. Watching these various sets of assumptions interact with those of humans is what makes the story so interesting. This book also delivers a sobering thwap upside the head to the tendency to think of humans as the most intelligent and noble species likely to exist in the galaxy. _Faded Sun_ will convincingly challenge both suppositions. After you finish it, you may find yourself reflecting on how far we are from what we could be. It would be a pity for any lover of SF to miss out on this volume.
Rating:
Summary: Cultural Conflicts or Cultural Understanding?
Review: Ever wonder what it means to be truly Human? With the cultural conflicts that abound today, this is a timely theme to examine. Cherryh skillfully nourishes the reader's curiosity and develops the information needed to understand the interplay of politics, religion, bureaucracy, social castes, individual needs vs group needs--all of it seamlessly, powerfully running through a satisfying story line that leaves the reader wanting more! This book will take you inside the mri culture, the regul culture and give you a different view of your own humanity. Relationships are at the heart of this book: the relationship of mri who have been used as mercenaries by the regul to fight their wars; of Duncan, the first to be taken alive by ANY mri in over 2000 years, to his captor, Niun; of regul to humans; of mri to the animal dusei who choose them as companions. As Duncan begins to try to understand the mri, he must leave behind old ideas and learn to honor his own gifts and others. Through him, we experience how difficult it is to leave off the prejudices of our own culture to be able to accurately view another. Drawn in great detail through the characters and their interactions, the richness of these cultures, their weaknesses and strengths, are explored in an emotionally satisfying way. TERRIFIC BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Great Reading with a Fast Pace!
Review: For some reason or another, I never read the three books when they were released singly. I can tell you that once I started the first of the three, I stayed up to finish it all in one day. Then the second book, the second day. But I ran out of steam and just nearly finished the third book on the third day. It is fast paced with wonderful characters and believable treacheries. GET IT .. READ IT :)
Rating: 
Summary: Try it if you find it for free, otherwise save your money
Review: I bought this trilogy in an airport on the way to a 10 day vacation. After slogging through the first book I left it behind for someone else to try. Cherryh does a reasonable job painting a picture of the worlds her characters inhabit, but the going is slow - virtually no action for the first 170 pages. And when things do happen, much of the big action isn't even described, but rather reflected - leaving the reader in the dark about some key details. Descriptions of action scenes are vague and leave you wondering what really happened. A pivotal event in the first book - battle between a Mri ship and the Regul which leaves the Mri ship destroyed and the base decimated - is essentially undescribed; we're left to puzzle out what happened and why ourselves. Much of the detail is also simply not credible. When Duncan Sten is wounded by a regul (we're not sure just how), he's later described as struggling through the poisonous desert atmosphere, frothing blood from an internal chest (lung?) wound - but then continues to perform task after Herculean task, somehow ending up just fine after getting back to base. Not very believable. Cherryh describes how the elder human governor to the planet, Stavros, had become hardened to the loss of life, having been involved in wars where he'd been required to sacrifice the lives of hundreds. Hundreds???? This is an interplanetary war. How many dozen Civil War battles involved more than a hundred deaths? Someone should also clue C.J. in to back off on some pet phrases like "Of a sudden.."; seing this once was a curiosity; by the fourth appearance it was beginning to be an irritant. Summary assessment - decent descriptive prose, seriously flawed by lack of attention to detail and poor rendering of action scenes. If you find this one lying on an airplane seat, give it a try - you might like it better than I. Otherwise, save your money.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book that leaves you craving more...
Review: I don't mean to sound like one of those corny reviews in the New York Times (or anything like that) but this book is one that you must read. This book is rich with alien landscapes and creatures. Very well written and planned out. C.J. Cherryh is now probably my favorite author. If you are into fantasy/sci-fi, or you are just giving it a try, definately give this book/these books a good read. I can garuntee that you won't be a able to put this book down as soon as you are twenty to thirty pages into it.
C.J. Cherryh's Faded Sun Trilogy is written for almost anybody. I can vouch for that. Before I had read this book, my favorite author was Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Chronicles). If you ask me, that is quite a transition to make. Soon after discovering this book, I picked up some Orson Scott Card and fell in love with his writing too (check him out too).
The book has a little vocabulary to pcik up on, but other than that, this is written for anyone with a junior-high reading lelvel or better. The best part about that is, I was in college when I picked it up.
The only thing that I am disappointed in is that there are only three books dealing with these characters in this book.
READ THIS BOOK/SERIES.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: I first picked up this book by chance at the bookstore, mostly attracted by the cover art. I was fascinated by the mri characters and Cherryh really took the time to develop and lay out their culture and the subtle nuances of the people. The world is deeply involving and you really get a feel for Niun and Melein and Duncan as you progress through the novel. Her descriptions are detailed and really draw the reader in. All in all, an excellent read that you will want to read again and again.
| 
