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So a good thirty years later, I did. Suddenly, Meg and Calvin are now married AND Meg's pregnant AND Mrs. What is he). Murry.
Oh yeah, guess they gotta kythe again -- we went over that in "A Wind in the Door" so there's no need to rehash. Whatever happened to plot development. A friend tried to convince me that I should give it another try. Decades ago, eagerly anticipating a sequel on par with "A Wrinkle in Time" and "A Wind in the Door," I read a few pages into "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" and was immediately disappointed. A handful of tropes are recycled; by this point the book almost cannibalizes itself. Forget the tease with which the exotic dragonlike cherub(im) was introduced in "A Wind in the Door." (Does he exist.
Get us a winged unicorn, pronto -- everyone knows what a unicorn looks like, so there's no need to dwell on it. Charles Wallace needs Meg's help as a glorified reference book.
It's abstract, it's confusing, and it's humorless. Murry has won the Nobel AND the president's on the phone with Mr.
But after all this rush to jump-start the plot, the book sags into a long, tedious Gordian knot entwining generations of a family in locales from Wales to Patagonia. I almost wish I hadn't.The concepts that were revealed gradually in the first two books, piquing the curiosity of both the characters and the reader, are now almost lifeless reflexes.
Charles Wallace needs a guide for his quest. The rivalry between peaceful and warlike brother is enacted and reenacted as names like "Brandon" and "Zilla" and "Maddok" reappear in countless combinations ("Branzillo", "Beezie", "Zyll").
Whatever happened to the playful genius that brought us the very real speech-impaired witches in "A Wrinkle in Time" or the cloned school principal in "A Wind in the Door".In "A Swiftly Tilting Planet," Charles Wallace builds a model of a tesseract, the time-folding structure at the core of "A Wrinkle in Time." The transformation of a concept into a plastic object is a sadly appropriate symbol for the book's lifeless recycling of its inventive predecessors.
A wonderful ending to a most original series. I loved this series as a child and as an adult i am still able to enjoy it.
The plot is so fabulously wound up in this book, and comes with great twists. And the villains are nightmarish, as always the author doesn't try to tone it down for the young audience. I love the murreys. I want them to be my family.
This book has some real sci-fi twists as Charles Wallace not only travels through time but actually inhabits real people in the past in order that he might change history and the future through leading them to different behavior. Swiftly Tilting Planet takes readers on another fantastic journey with the Murry's, the family from A Wrinkle in Time series. This lends the book the feel of a collection of connected short stories. In this story, 15-yr old Charles Wallace accepts to burden to travel backwards in time with the gifted eons-old unicorn Guadior. Their task to to find the significant "might have been" to change in order to avert a present-day nuclear war of annihilation.The journey includes important roles for Meg and a new dog who help Charles Wallace and Guadior by "kything" with them as they journey through time. It also creates suspense as readers are eager to find out the "might have been" that Charles must bring to reality. The downside is that I became confused trying to keep track of the figures from the past and how they are all related.This is an enjoyable and stimulating book that I'm sure fans of L'Engle will appreciate.
And as always, Charles Wallace is acting brilliant because that's what brilliant children do (he's building a model of a tesseract, in case you were curious). It begins simple enough, a few names to keep track of, no big deal. Got that. Anyway, sorry for that long aside), and coincidentally possesses a seemingly-powerful rune to pass on to Charles who coincidentally must use it to stop the terrorist.
In fact, the story is downright confusing. If you enjoy being confused, this is the book for you.The plot is straightforward: a man is threatening to destroy the world, and it's up to Charles Wallace to stop him with the help of a pusillanimous time-traveling unicorn and his sister, Meg. Calvin (Meg's husband) is in Europe delivering some speech at some medical convention (translation: Calvin is a successfully brilliant person too).Coincidentally, Calvin O'Keef's mother is there with the Murrys the same night a man declares war on the world (by the way -- if a man has just declared war on the world, do you really think the President of the United States of America would have time to call and give his "best science guy" a heads-up. This goes on throughout most of the book and makes it seem as if the plot elements are only loosely thatched together.If this book had included a family tree of some kind (alla One Hundred Years of Solitude), I would have given it three stars (despite its confusing story, it DOES have some appealing originality), but since nothing like that is present I can only give it two. However, the last third of the book is so convoluted you'll want to repeatedly kick yourself in the stomach.Then of course there's the quality of the storytelling -- predictable, trite, cliche, corny, cheesy.should I go on.
This appeared to be the only reason the president called Father Murry -- what good would a theoretical physicist do at a time like that. The storytelling doesn't help the situation, either.I recommend leaving this book on your shelf. Great, because the story isn't so straightforward. Notice the pattern. The story opens with the ridiculously successful Murry family: one of the twins is a doctor, the other a lawyer, Mother Murry has won the Nobel prize, and Father Murry is the president's closest chum.
Meanwhile, Meg is pregnant and destined to be a housewife (by CHOICE, by the way, to put you feminists at ease). THERE ARE TOO MANY COINCIDENCES FOR ME TO CARE ABOUT THIS STORY. Don't even think of letting your kids read it -- they won't understand it anyway.
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