Particularly in its complex linguistic development, readers of The Faded Sun often find similarities to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, another enormous work conceived as an entirety, not as three related novels of a "trilogy." The Lord of the Rings established a now well-worn pattern for subsequent sets of fantasy quest novels, incorporating sorcery, various races of beings, the necessary role of the humble in the affairs of the mighty, a king's assumption of his rightful rank, and above all, the archetypal clash of Good and Evil. While Cherryh's use of language in The Faded Sun operates at an effective, if not as extensive, a level as Tolkien's in The Lord of the Rings, the two authors differ widely in their attitudes toward technology, which Tolkien associates with the evil that destroys Middle-Earth, and Cherryh celebrates as both the price and the...