The Faded Sun Trilogy | |||||||||
C.J. Cherryh | |||||||||
DAW Books, 775 pages | |||||||||
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A review by Alma A. Hromic
It read as though it had been written by a non-human mind and hand, and then translated or transliterated into our language and
idiom. It treated the humans as just another alien species in a Universe teeming with them. The effect was electric -- it jolted at
least this human reader into re-evaluating some obvious human thought processes from the perspective of a non-human observing intelligence,
and found not a few of them wanting in logic, in sense, in compassion.
The books have lost nothing of this many-faceted brilliant strangeness over the years.
For a volume of the size and thickness of this particular omnibus edition, the print is far too close into the inside margins, making it
difficult to read without breaking the book's spine -- but this is more than made up for in having the three books instantly available,
back to back, for a breathless cover-to-cover read of what remains, in my opinion, one of the seminal works in the genre.
There are few writers out there today who can deal with alien issues and psychology in the way that Cherryh can. She writes
this trilogy of novels with a historian's detachment -- as though it is being written many years after the events depicted, and
therefore so rooted and grounded that much of what she describes feels like memory and knowledge rather than a novelist's
invention. At the same time she achieves an intimate immediacy of being in not one, not two, but three alien minds, with attendant
psychological processes, misunderstandings, and conflicting ethical and moral standpoints.
There are lines drawn here, on the part of every species taking part in the unfolding events, lines which are not meant to be
crossed -- but which are trampled by the other species in ignorance and fear. There is an inevitability about the tragedies that
ensue, as though some holy book is being read, as though there were a lesson hidden in here for those who survived the wars and come
to read about them in their aftermath. There is a sense of immensity, of space and of time, of countless years passing and of distant
stars blinking and dying and being born and reborn in countless alien skies.
This one is a keeper, a monument to both the memory of the elephantine regul and the quicksilver imagination of the brittle,
brilliant, misunderstood mri -- and the bridge between these two, the humans, warned against our fears and our lack of knowledge
or understanding and of the inevitable and often disastrous results that such things can bring to shatter the legacy of more than
just a single nation, culture, or species. The Faded Sun Trilogy has an air of being something that was, that is,
that could still be. This book is timeless, and enduring. Its re-publication in a single volume is a gift to a whole new generation of readers.
Alma A. Hromic, addicted (in random order) to coffee, chocolate and books, has a constant and chronic problem of "too many books, not enough bookshelves". When not collecting more books and avidly reading them (with a cup of coffee at hand), she keeps busy writing her own. Her latest fantasy work, a two-volume series entitled Changer of Days, was published by HarperCollins. |
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