It's hard not to like L'Engle's books. They all have such poetry and
imagination that you can really escape into them. And this one, a
sequel to "A Wrinkle In Time" does that first book justice and continues
the story of the Murry family who are all special in their own way.
It's
Thanksgiving and Meg and her brothers are back at the family home to be
together. Meg is heavily pregnant and resting while her husband is
away and has even invited her strange mother in law to join them as
well. But it is at this dinner that her father gets a call from the
President saying that a dictator in Vespugia is threatening war and
bombing. Her younger brother Charles Wallace is set to a mission and
using a verse that Meg's mother in law gives him, he must travel through
time with the help of a unicorn to try to tweak the past and change the
future.
I didn't feel as connected to the characters in this
book as I did in Wrinkle of Time. I think its because everything
bounces around so much and from time to time to different whens and
wheres that it's hard to get a read on the characters. Meg is a
constant, but she is just an observer telling Charles Wallace's story so
we don't get much of a sense of her in this. Being that previously she
was always a child, I had somewhat looked forward to learning of her as
an adult, but alas, that is just not for this book. Charles Wallace is
so many different people during his travels in time that he too is not
described greatly aside from being brave in a unique sort of way. But
the people he is in the past all have interesting stories, and there is a
chain that ties them all together through history.
I liked the
concept of the time travel and the tweaking of certain events to get a
better future. I think L'Engle handled it excellently, as she does will
all scientific and mythological combinations. She just has a way of
weaving unlikely things together in a beautiful way. Combine that with
the poetry and legend she incorporates into her book and it's hard to be
disappointed when reading something of hers. There is a little bit of
religion incorporated into her works as well, but it was actually pretty
light in this book as compared to some of the others. And her version
of Christianity is so peaceful that it doesn't come across preachy like
so many other authors do. As for this book tying in to the others of
the quartet, it probably could be read alone. There isn't much mention
of the other books and no important details are left out. In fact,
reading it, it almost seems as if the other books didn't exist at all.
I
beautifully written book with a lot of interesting topics and concepts,
A Swiftly Tilting Planet is appropriate for all ages. With a little
more character development, I think this could have been right there at
the top of fiction.
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Copyright 1978
278 pages
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