This is one of my favorite books of all time, and it formed a lot of my thinking about how mankind should function here on Earth. I had a lot of trouble tracking this title down on Goodreads, which saddens me, because it's a terrific book that I wish more people would read.

Not quite as good as Enchantress From the Stars, but still a worthy sequel.

This is definitely a young adult book, despite it being in the children's section in my library. It is dark--Elana is tortured in multiple ways--but not graphic. And the science fiction setting provides an emotional safety net, since Elana has special powers that make most of the torture ineffective.

I really liked that science fiction was used as a frame to discuss real-world issues. This is not escapism. This book could generate good discussions about nuclear war, space exploration, drug abuse, good vs. evil, the Cold War era, etc. Even though this book was originally published in the 1970's, these topics are still relevant, and the prose has aged well. I didn't feel like I was reading an old-fashioned book.

My main critique of the book is that I couldn't connect to Kari (one of the people on the less advanced planet that is meant to be compared to Earth) on an emotional level. She felt more like a plot device than a person.

I think I read this in the early 2000s...but I shall have to re-read it to be sure, I guess. I distinctly remember a sensory deprivation scene and a general need for an alien-protagonist-lady to blend in. And a space ship. And the dimensions of the physical book being kind of weird.

Elana, our heroine, has just graduated from the Federation Anthropological Service Academy. Her first "official" assignment has her going undercover on the youngling planet, Toris. The planet is in the "Critical Stage," and the Federation is sending dozens of agents in undercover. It's an information gathering mission, not one of intervention. The goal: blend in as much as possible with the Younglings, and transmit your observations when possible. It's dangerous because if Toris goes critical--uses nuclear weapons--then all the agents are essentially just as doomed as the younglings themselves. The only other agent Elana knows is another recent graduate. His name is Randil. He's a mess.



Toris has two "warring" governments, which is putting the planet in "Critical Stage." Elana's cover gets blown, and she's captured as a spy. The book is her report of how she become imprisoned and how she's handling the daily torture.



The premise of Far Side of Evil is simple. All civilizations--all planets--evolve through a critical stage, a stage where they choose to use their technology for weapons--nuclear warfare--or they choose to use their technology to go to the stars, to explore and colonize space.



Did I like The Far Side of Evil? Not really. Why? That's a good question. Was it because the chapters were way too long? Perhaps. Was it because it lacked the charm of The Enchantress From the Stars? Perhaps. I will say that Enchantress from the Stars has an almost fairy-tale feel to it in places. It reads like a fantasy book. Was it Randil's fault? Probably. He certainly proves irritating and infuriating. But it wasn't his fault alone. I also found Elana's narration to be less than ideal. I found her to be smug, arrogant, condescending, and repetitive. Why was Elana so likeable in Enchantress from the Stars and so unlikeable in Far Side of Evil? I think in the first book she was more vulnerable, and less confident in her abilities. She wasn't alone. She was acting under the advice of other older-and-wiser Federation agents, including her father. Both books are premise-driven to a certain extent; but Far Side of Evil is only premise-driven, and Enchantress from the Stars is plot-driven and character-driven too.

I really enjoyed this one as well, despite the wordy writing style.

After thorough enjoying  Enchantress from the Stars, I began its sequel. To my delight, the emotional draw felt from the first book is surpassed in the second.

This book is not geared for the same audience though. The concepts presented herein are best suited for an older group, in my mind, 14 and older. This is a book that will make you think, even as adults. Additionally, the story relies very little on action as much as plain human interaction, so those interested in thrill rides or quests need not apply.

The author's afterword indicates some regret in tying the two books by focusing on Elana. But I feel that the use of Elana helps the reader to quickly identify with her and provide a backdrop for where Elana's wisdom come from. In the end, the comparison of Elana's experienced wisdom vs Randil's learned knowledge is the cause of the conflict.

I withheld the fifth star from my rating for the simple fact that there was a teeny bit too much "deus ex machina" in the resolution for my tastes.

The Far Side of Evil by Sylvia Engdahl

The author of this book asserts that it is not a sequel to Enchantress From the Stars, although in some ways it could be considered to be one. It is indeed a sequel in the sense that the story centers around the same protagonist, and it is set in the same universe. It is not a sequel in that it can be read completely apart from Enchantress From the Stars, and is aimed at a different audience, as the darker content is suitable for more mature teens and adults, but not for middle-grade students.

In The Far Side of Evil, Elana has received the training that she lacked in Enchantress From the Stars, and is ready for her first official assignment. Usually, a newly qualified agent of the Federation's Anthropological Service would only be assigned as part of a team under a more senior and experienced operative. However, Elana is sent on a solo mission to a planet called Toris, where there is an opportunity to observe a situation which has never been recorded hitherto by the Anthropological Service.

One of the author's personal convictions is that humanoid species on planets like Earth must at a certain point in their evolution expand into space if they are to avoid extinction. When their ambitions, aggressions, and need for overcoming risks and dangers are turned outward into space, the danger of total war is lessened, and when colonies start to be established beyond the home planet, most resources and energies are concentrated in this activity, leading to greater cooperation between nations and the eventual cessation of international conflicts. The period between the invention of weapons of mass destruction and the peaceful colonization of space is called the Critical Stage.

The Anthropological Service is well aware of the importance of the Critical Stage, but the recent discovery of Toris has provided a unique opportunity to observe firsthand the factors which decide whether a world survives or not. Unfortunately, Toris appears to be on the brink of self-annihilation, and it evidently has no interest in space exploration. Elana is sent on a solo mission of observation into a totalitarian dictatorship which seems bent on starting a nuclear war with more liberal-minded nations.

The Anthropological Service has an important Prime Directive of non-interference in younger 'less mature' cultures (similar to the one which is rarely adhered to in Star Trek). Agents like Elana take this principle very seriously since it is part of their Sworn Oath, and they are willing to die rather than risk disclosure of their true origins and the existence of the Federation.
Another young agent also assigned to the same planet considers himself an authority on Critical Stage cultures, and becomes convinced that direct intervention is justified and necessary in order to save the Torisians from themselves. But his naive actions play right into the hands of the dictatorship, which arrests Elana and interrogates her mercilessly (which is partly why this book is unsuitable for children).

In some ways this book is related to the time in which it was written (as are most works of fiction). In the early 1970s, the Cold War was still in full swing, but there was optimism about the future based on the then-recent Moon landings. Many people who observed events at that time would probably have expected there to be bases and colonies beyond Earth by the year 2020, and that we would by now be emerging from the Critical Stage. Although many things have changed greatly in the last half century, it nonetheless appears that we are yet firmly within that phase. But despite these facts, the story in no way feels dated.

Some readers have commented that the book contains too much philosophy and too little plot, but I did not feel that way when reading it. In fact, I found the balance to be just right. There are the overarching philosophical concepts involving whole planets and peoples, and the personal moral and ethical concerns regarding the decisions of individuals. To what extent do the ends justify the means when supporting an ideal, and how far should personal sacrifice go in adhering to cherished principles?
The idea that The Far Side of Evil is in some way a veiled political commentary is also baseless in my opinion, since the political powers mentioned are clearly generic and not intended to represent any specific parties in our world.

I found The Far Side of Evil to be a significantly more profound read than Enchantress From the Stars, but like that book there are many quotable passages which are relevant to our lives today, and which can help us make sense of the situations we find ourselves in.
Here are some of them:

“The human mind can’t be forced. You can’t even hurt me if I decide not to be hurt.”

“...there’s a danger in concentrating too hard on abstract theory.”

“...you have to trust the universe. You have to believe that the natural order of things has some sort of sense to it, some real if incomprehensible logic, and that what’s true isn’t to be feared.”

“After all, agents are chosen for sensitivity and imagination, among other things; and sensitive, imaginative people aren’t fearless. They are usually more apprehensive than average.”

“The underlying basis of panic is terror not of the threat itself but of how you’ll react to it.”
“Maybe it was simply that people live with what they have to live with, whether they think they can face it or not.”

“...there’s a pattern that takes in more than this world. I don’t understand it, and neither does anybody else. We can’t expect to understand it when we don’t have all the facts, but that’s no reason for deciding that everything is senseless! If it were, we might as well blow up the whole planet right now and be done with it, because what would it matter?”

“There comes a point for every human race when for the first—and only—time in its history it has the ability to destroy itself completely, and that point coincides with the point at which it is ready to take its first steps beyond its home world. The level of technology that creates one possibility simultaneously creates the other. If the colonization of space is undertaken, it becomes all-absorbing, full-scale war is forgotten, and the danger is averted.”

“The world is the way it is. There’s no place to hide; we’ve got to live in it and bear up under the pressure.”

“If there’s anything harder to counter than a clever lie, it’s a truth that’s been honestly misinterpreted.”

““Everything is purposeful,” I said gently. “Even the terrible things. But we don’t understand them while they’re happening.””

“If you ever find yourself faced with something really bad, something inescapable against which you have no defense, your only recourse is to accept it. Once you’re absolutely sure that there’s no way out, don’t resist. Just relax and let it happen. That will seem hard, but believe me, it will be less painful than shrinking from the thing. You’ll get something from it—you won’t feel that you can; you won’t understand; but in the end you will gain, if not from the experience itself, then simply from your bravery.”

“You have more to draw on than you think, I guess; you can do what you have to do.”

“It’s a funny thing, but if you try to act scared, any real fear you start out with stops bothering you; it becomes part of the game.”

“Nobody ever jumps from naïveté to realism; there’s a cynical stage in between. That’s true of worlds, and I guess it’s true of people, too.”

“...by subordinating the means to the end. That’s the only way anybody can judge anything, and when such a judgment is immoral it’s because the end itself is worth less than what must be destroyed to achieve it.”

“Evil lies not in a given act but in a person’s sense of values.”

“...the sustaining knowledge that evil, even victorious evil, was not the most powerful force in the universe.”

“It was as if I didn’t really mind what they did to me, because it wasn’t important compared with what I was doing by resisting. I was free inside, and they couldn’t change that; but I could stop them from doing harm to the world, so I had more power than any of them.”

“People differ in their ideas about morality, but by and large everybody agrees that if you deliberately do wrong, somewhere, somehow, you will suffer for it. Well, you do, and it can’t be avoided.”

“Dictatorships always fall in the end; that’s an incontrovertible law of nature.”

Strong storyline that grapples with personal ethics and morality; do the ends justify the means when dealing with the nuclear ‘critical stage’ of society and technology.

I thought about this one for a long time afterwards. Engdahl's theory that there are 3 phases for a planet is an extremely interesting one. This story (sequel to ENCHANTRESS FROM THE STARS) is of a planet in its third phase, where the people will either destroy themselves through war caused by overpopulation, or they'll figure out how to get off of the planet and find other living space.

Wow!

I don't agree with the author's opinions about a number of things (and she makes it clear in afterwords and elsewhere that several ideas which seem to be plot devices are her actual opinions), but she sure tells a good story!

The previous Elana book, Enchantress from the Stars, would probably be suitable for a 10-year-old and up, but for this one I would wait until 14 or so, depending on the person. There is torture, though the author is careful not to be graphic, and the account of it is mitigated in other ways.

Both are still quite interesting even to old people.

The Far side of Evil by: Sylvia Engdahl, is without doubt a product of the time it was written in. Man had been to the moon, the Berlin Wall was still up and Vietnam was taking young men over seas to fight a war that many didn't believe in. All of that was before my time of course, but you get a sense of what it must have been like to live through all of these things from reading this book.

The story is about an advanced society, who spend their time observing less advanced worlds. They find a world, Toris, in the midst of a cold war. The main character, Elana, very much believes in the oath she took to not interfere. The second view point character, Randil, acts as an antagonist. He doesn't understand why they shouldn't use their advanced technology to save the Torisains from themselves.

As a whole this book is an interesting commentary on a time period that shaped the world as we know it. As a Space opera I could have used a little less philosophical debate on the necessity of war and more momentum to the pace. The story is hard to get into, mostly because it is written with a message in mind.