The Faded Sun Trilogy

The Faded Sun trilogy is a science fiction series by American author C.J. Cherryh, taking place in her Alliance–Union universe. It consists of three novels: The Faded Sun: Kesrith (1978), The Faded Sun: Shon'jir (1978), and The Faded Sun: Kutath (1979), all originally from DAW Books. A combined omnibus edition came out in the UK in 1987 and in the US in 2000.

These are among Cherryh’s early works, known for their detailed world-building and multiple alien species. Kesrith was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1978, the Hugo Award in 1979, and made the shortlist for the Locus Awards that same year. The other two books each independently were finalists for the Locus Award.

Plot summary

The trilogy functions partly as a coming-of-age story for Niun, the mri protagonist, and partly as a story of cultural adaptation, as human Sten Duncan lives among the mri and eventually becomes one of them. It is the main account of the Mri Wars era in Cherryh’s universe. At the start, the regul have just ended a forty-year war with humanity and, as part of the peace, are giving humanity the desert world Kesrith—without telling its inhabitants, the mri, who have served the regul as mercenaries for over two thousand years.

The mri have been nearly wiped out in the wars, and young Niun is one of the few remaining warriors. When the regul try to betray his people, he and his sister Melein, the last of the priestly Sen caste, form a shaky alliance with human Sten Duncan to rescue a holy relic that may hold the key to mri survival. In the second book, Niun and Melein are captives of the human occupation force, kept alive by sedated human medicine. The human command, hoping to thwart the regul’s attempted genocide, uses data from the relic to produce a navigation data crystal said to lead to the mri homeworld.

They put Niun and Melein on a ship, with Duncan along to run it. Shortly after leaving Kesrith, Melein decrees that nothing non-mri can return to the ancient homeworld, forcing Duncan to become mri or die. Under Niun’s tutelage, he learns the strict rules of the mri warrior caste, the Kel. Their journey takes approximately 18 months of subjective time, each jump revealing evidence of earlier mri civilizations, all destroyed.

They realize the mri have been nearly exterminated many times before, always as mercenaries turned on by their employers.