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It's intelligent, and philosophical, and it makes you angry, and it makes you think, and it makes you hope.

It involves a planet which is in a Medieval stage of development, so Earth sends in "on the ground" observers for study purposes, who are trained to blend in. The thing is, what to a researcher on Earth "interesting development, 200 people got killed in a routine feudal coup," to the person on the ground are his friends dying. Yet, they cannot interfere, shortcircuit the curse of history and give (e.g.) the more enlightened guys guns, as that would result in more death, more innocent people (only different ones) dying.

But does standing back make you less human? When you start to see people not as individuals but as masses, there's a problem. The main character, Anton, is probably one of my favorite fictional characters ever, and the end? Wow. You see him fall apart more and more during the book, as he witnesses more and more events he knows he should not interfere in, but is morally repulsed to let proceed. He is a good man, whose humanity is outraged more and more daily, and he is teetering on the edge of losing it the whole book, (view spoiler)[and when he finally is pushed over the edge? It is wrong, and he shouldn't have done it, there is no question of that. (hide spoiler)] But there is also no question that if he did not act, he would forfeit a claim to his own humanity, because it would be inhuman not to have a snapping point. And of course his actions do not make it better.

The book really does make a point that people as people, matter. For example, Kira is not even a blip in a history book, she didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. But of course, she was the world to Anton, (view spoiler)[and her loss is not better for him because history does not care one way or another. (hide spoiler)] And every person who died in any of these events historians record, routine palace coups, book burnings, little wars, really mattered to somebody. But, and that's why I love it, interference does not make it better for others. These people are not ready for modernity. Interference allows you to save your own humanity, but no more. I don't know how something so hopeless comes across as so hopeful, but it does.