Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet is opened by the Newbury Award winning 'A Wrinkle in Time'. 'A Wind In The Door', published in 1973, is the second in the series. The title is a near-quote from Sir Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur'. In this adventure of inner space travel and worlds of virtual reality, Charles Wallace Murry is now six years old, and he is dying of an unknown disease of the mitochondria. (Mitochondria - singular, mitochondrion - being the minute structures carrying the biochemical energy processes of all complex living cells, including human cells. See textbooks for further details.) Meg, his older sister, must save him by completing three tasks to complete his healing - a fight which is but one battle on Earth in the long universal war against the shape-shifting Echthroi. The first task, helped by Calvin her boyfriend and a supportive dragon and snake, is to save her brother's school principal from his lifetime of self-loathing. In the process she deepens her powers of self-control and her understanding of love by loving the unlovely. The second task takes place within the deep structure of a mitochondrion in one of Charles Wallace's bodily cells. Shrunk to a molecular scale, Meg, Calvin, the principal, and the dragon, meleé with the enemy in an exciting battle of mental powers. The third task involves the sad loss of one of the party.
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If you enjoy Harry Potter, The Hobbit/LOTR, or The Narnia Chronicles, you will enjoy the Time Quartet. This story takes the series to higher heights and deeper depths, and it is too good to ever be made into a film, so you will have to read it.
The review of this Book prepared by Michael JR Jose
The sequel to "A Wrinkle in Time" focuses again on the touching relationship between Meg Murry and her undersized brother, Charles Wallace. Charles' mitochondria, (a theoretical and miniscule part of his immune system) are being attacked by diabolical forces, cleverly named the Greek word Ecthroi. Charles is dying. A cherubim, Meg and others wage a battle that transcends our normal perception of space/time, a battle which shows us how important a single human being can truly be.
The review of this Book prepared by Daniel
