I just COULD NOT get into this book. It took all my patience to get through this book.

An interesting introduction to philosophy and ethics for YA readers, clothed in the guise of a well known fairy tale. I liked Elana she was complex in a way a lot of fairy tale heroines are not. The book skewed a bit too young for me to really get swept away but I think that for the tween age group it could get you thinking in a lot of new ways.

TITLE: Enchantress from the Stars
WHY I CHOSE THIS BOOK: It is a Newbery Honor Book; it met my reading challenge criteria being connected to the book before it, Dogsong, both being honor books
REVIEW: When I first started reading this some elements reminded me of Star Trek. I thought maybe this story came before since I knew it was written in the 60s and maybe Gene Rodenbery was inspired by this author. This book came out several years after Star Trek came out. Maybe it was inspired by the show. You had something like the federation and the prime directive. The book explained those concepts more clearly. It asks good questions about the ethics of meddling or not, in a world. Is it okay to trick someone you consider a friend if it is "for their own good". Is it better to stay in and try to change things, or are you just enabling? Amazing that three people people from different cultures come together at the exact right time in order to mitigate disaster. Was it fate or just coincidence? I liked all the characters and was eager for them to succeed.

I loved this book as a child and repeatedly checked it out from the school library. It was probably my first exposure to the idea of perspective, that how one sees an item or an event is dependent on background and culture.

Elana is a girl (probably teenage) from an advanced civilization which has telepathy and space travel and has developed beyond the need for war. Jarel is from a technologically advanced society which is expanding through colonization of other planets. Georyn is a woodcutter's son on a planet which has not yet developed industrially.

So what Jarel and Elana know is a rock-crushing machine, Georyn thinks is a dragon to be slain.
Georyn thinks Elana is an Enchantress because her abilities must be magic. Elana knows that she is just a normal girl, but the others won't see her that way.

I rated this four stars when I re-read it in 2012, and am leaving that rating after re-reading in 2016 although probably closer to 4.5.

Adding re-read date 05/25/24 (Goodreads will not allow me to add another read date)

I'm rounding this up from 3, because grade-school me would have LOVED this book at a 5+. With this Newbery honor book, you get space-oriented fairytale fantasy action that would leave Joseph Campbell proud of the hero quest that is involved and Gene Roddenberry nodding at the oath that regulates the interaction of an advanced race with those that are below it. The undertone of preachiness and advocacy of manipulation training keeps adult me from hitting that 5-star mark, but I still enjoyed the read. I suspect that the tone would be different had Engdahl been writing this 40 years later. Still - for 1970, Elana was a remarkably advanced young female protagonist.

Doesn’t hold up to logical scrutiny, but then, neither do most Star Trek episodes and I still eat those up.

The characters are fairly cardboard to me and this is definitely more of a thought experiment than a study in humans (and it’s confusing because the thought experiment IS the study of humans, but then the humans in the book aren’t very well studied themselves).

When I was a young teen I found this book in the early 70s, in the shipboard library on the USS Woodrow Wilson. I was utterly enthralled, and saved up until I could buy my own copy -- my very first hardback fiction purchase! I still have that volume, which introduced me to SF and probably got me where I am today. Yes, it's that good!

The well known story goes like this: a dragon begins to terrorize the land and the king sends forth his strongest warriors. When his warriors fail, he sets forth a decree that any who slays the dragon shall be rewarded. To take up this task is a poor woodcutter's youngest son, aided by a beautiful enchantress and a wise old man who give him three tasks and reward him with the magical gift needed to defeat the dragon.

"Enchantress from the Stars" retells this story from the point of view of Elana, the young "enchantress" who is, in fact, a member of a far more advanced race charged with watching over the young society of the Andrecians (the society to which the woodcutter's son belongs) and protecting them from a more advanced society which has invaded and is using their machines (read: dragon) to colonize Andrecia. Elana, her father, and her fiancee cannot expose themselves to either society, and thus assume the elf-like role of legend as they train Georyn, their chosen hero, to scare the invaders into leaving.

Cleverly written, Enchantress combines fantasy and science fiction in a seemless exploration of society, mythology, and the limitless boundaries of human imagination.

I didn't expect to like this book very much, but I really did. It made me think a lot about our role on earth, technology, and faith. We discussed it in our book group.

I liked this book a lot. I was particularly taken with the world and the concept of trying to stop the colonization of one planet by another civilization, with the limitations of not revealing come from a third civilization to either side. There was something about the voice that kept me at arm's length of this story though, and I found myself putting the book down for long stretches with not much of a desire to pick it back up. Still, it was a really interesting read, and I'm glad I read it.

I both listened and read this book. It is a Newbery Honor book from the early 1970s, and I loved it. It has a sci-fi plot which appealed to me. It is the story of 3 peoples on a planet. There are the natives that live there. There are the people from the stars who are trying to colonize it. The third group is the galactic empire that watches over planets and tries to keep them from interfering with others until they are mature enough to know better. It definitely had a Star Trek Prime Directive feel. My copy had an intro by Lois Lowry which was also excellent. The book takes place on the 3rd planet around a yellow sun which is also where the other 2 peoples come from. It is deliberately vague about whether it is in the past or future and whether or not any of the peoples might be from earth which only makes the story better.

I know a lot of people really liked this book, especially when they read it as youth - and I have to admit that the story was interesting - I just didn't love it. I did think it was neat that the story was told in turns from the eyes of the three main characters. I just couldn't forge a connection with any of those characters, so I had a hard time caring what happened to them. I found serious flaws with the idea that humanoid sentient life forms were all the universe could manage. (this was never explicitly stated, but we met at least 4 species of humans with absolutely no mention of any other kind of sentient creatures) I also wasn't impressed with the statement that all civilizations eventually follow the same developmental path to enlightenment. Perhaps it's just my nature to want to buck the system and forge my own path.