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100 Books, #34: The Far Side of Evil
Dec. 12th, 2013 09:37 amOn the ask me questions meme, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nagasasu asked for a review of Sylvia Louise Engdahl’s The Far Side of Evil, which is technically the sequel the Enchantress from the Stars. However, the two books tell quite different stories with quite different tones and are tied together only because they share a heroine: Elana, a member of the Federation’s Anthropological Service.
In The Far Side of Evil, Elana is on the planet Toris to study a people that has just reached its Critical Stage: its inhabitants have the nuclear weapons to kill all life on their home planet, but have not yet started the space exploration that will eventually channel their energies in more construction directions.
But Elana has more pressing problems than the dim possibility of nuclear annihilation. When we catch up with her on Toris, she’s imprisoned and under intensive interrogation. She spends the first half of the book unfolding for us the reasons for her imprisonment - much the same way, it occurs to me, that Julie does in Code Name Verity.
In fact, I might recommend The Far Side of Evil to Code Name Verity fans. The similarity between them is more than just structural. Both focus on a heroine in an increasingly desperate situation who must keep her secrets in order to protect others, who begins to tell her story in order to keep herself together. Moreover, while Elana’s friendship with her roommate Kari is not quite as intense as Maddie and Julie’s, it is in its own way very satisfying.
Elana and Kari are always talking about the big ideas: the nature of bravery and hope and humanity, which seem separate but become braided together here. The Neo-Statists invaded Kari’s home when she was a little girl, and although she despises them and their belief in the primacy of the state over the individual (their prescribed greeting is “Hail to the glory of the state, citizen”), she doesn’t dare to oppose them directly. Her uncle Dirk joined the resistance after the invasion. They caught him, they shot him, and Kari is terrified.
Kari is convinced that she’s weak and cowardly. This is not quite fair: even at the beginning she shows flickers of strength at the beginning, like wearing a yellow ribbon to mark a forbidden holiday. But at the same time, her assessment of herself is far from wrong, and it’s one of the book’s great strengths that Kari is never condemned for her fear or her weakness.
Elana’s response to Kari’s weakness is not scorn, but sympathy. Kari would be a happier and a better person if she could that weakness and stand up for what she knows is right - and signs like the yellow ribbon show Elana that Kari does know what is right, and even wants to express it, even if she doesn’t dare say it directly at first. But living in dystopia saps her strength. She can’t get stronger without encouragement.
Elana (and her fellow agent Randil) provide that encouragement. They don’t discuss philosophy with Kari simply to strengthen her - they are interested in these topics for their own sakes - but simply expressing that thoughts she’s kept hidden so long strengthens Kari.
Strength in The Far Side of Evil rests in honesty and compassion. It’s a book about good people who care about ideas, but never to the exclusion of people: who sometimes make terrible mistakes, but strive to do better.
nagasasu asked for a review of Sylvia Louise Engdahl’s The Far Side of Evil, which is technically the sequel the Enchantress from the Stars. However, the two books tell quite different stories with quite different tones and are tied together only because they share a heroine: Elana, a member of the Federation’s Anthropological Service. In The Far Side of Evil, Elana is on the planet Toris to study a people that has just reached its Critical Stage: its inhabitants have the nuclear weapons to kill all life on their home planet, but have not yet started the space exploration that will eventually channel their energies in more construction directions.
But Elana has more pressing problems than the dim possibility of nuclear annihilation. When we catch up with her on Toris, she’s imprisoned and under intensive interrogation. She spends the first half of the book unfolding for us the reasons for her imprisonment - much the same way, it occurs to me, that Julie does in Code Name Verity.
In fact, I might recommend The Far Side of Evil to Code Name Verity fans. The similarity between them is more than just structural. Both focus on a heroine in an increasingly desperate situation who must keep her secrets in order to protect others, who begins to tell her story in order to keep herself together. Moreover, while Elana’s friendship with her roommate Kari is not quite as intense as Maddie and Julie’s, it is in its own way very satisfying.
Elana and Kari are always talking about the big ideas: the nature of bravery and hope and humanity, which seem separate but become braided together here. The Neo-Statists invaded Kari’s home when she was a little girl, and although she despises them and their belief in the primacy of the state over the individual (their prescribed greeting is “Hail to the glory of the state, citizen”), she doesn’t dare to oppose them directly. Her uncle Dirk joined the resistance after the invasion. They caught him, they shot him, and Kari is terrified.
Kari is convinced that she’s weak and cowardly. This is not quite fair: even at the beginning she shows flickers of strength at the beginning, like wearing a yellow ribbon to mark a forbidden holiday. But at the same time, her assessment of herself is far from wrong, and it’s one of the book’s great strengths that Kari is never condemned for her fear or her weakness.
Elana’s response to Kari’s weakness is not scorn, but sympathy. Kari would be a happier and a better person if she could that weakness and stand up for what she knows is right - and signs like the yellow ribbon show Elana that Kari does know what is right, and even wants to express it, even if she doesn’t dare say it directly at first. But living in dystopia saps her strength. She can’t get stronger without encouragement.
Elana (and her fellow agent Randil) provide that encouragement. They don’t discuss philosophy with Kari simply to strengthen her - they are interested in these topics for their own sakes - but simply expressing that thoughts she’s kept hidden so long strengthens Kari.
Strength in The Far Side of Evil rests in honesty and compassion. It’s a book about good people who care about ideas, but never to the exclusion of people: who sometimes make terrible mistakes, but strive to do better.
