A Wind in the Door (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, 2)

This novel is profoundly overrated. I read it as a child (probably of ten or eleven) and loved it, as I had loved A Wrinkle In Time, but re-reading it as an adult of forty (and now an English teacher), I must say that A Wind In The Door is heavy-handed, didactic, clumsy, and just plain smug in its willful avoidance of good storytelling and readability. L'Engle beats you over the head with Christian allegory that doesn't really go beyond a very vague sort of early '70s "love EVERYONE" vibe. Characters appear and are immediately recognized as "good" or "evil," and don't even get me STARTED on the dialogue. Honestly, if this had been written by one of my students, I'd send it back with "Do people REALLY ever talk like this?" in red pen. After reading what L'Engle wrote about J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series: "I read one of them. It's a nice story but there's nothing underneath it. I don't want to be bothered with stuff where there's nothing underneath. Some people say, "'Why do you read the Bible?'' I say, "Because there's a lot of stuff underneath,'"
I can't honestly say that she, herself, shows anything specific underneath. Her writing is smugly vague, full of odd certainties and gaping plot holes. I will admit to still finding A Wrinkle In Time fairly worthwhile, but it suffers from many of the same issues.

I loved "A Wrinkle in Time" from the very first time I read it as a kid, as shown by my five-star review for that book. One day, sometime after I'd finished "Wrinkle", the children's library got in a copy of "Wind in the Door" and I was so excited to see a new book about the Murrays. But when I tried to read it, I just couldn't get into it. I made several more attempts over the years, but finally had to give up and acknowledge that as much as I loved "Wrinkle" (still do actually), "Wind in the Door" is just not for me.

While "Wrinkle" seemed to be more of a sci-fi adventure story with a strong female character (rare in children's fiction of the 60s and 70s, and also rare in science fiction and space operas of that era), "Wind in the Door" is much heavier on the fantasy and Christian elements. The early chapters of the book are similar to "Wrinkle" in that they involve a benevolent but weird being that shows up in order to help the Murry family deal with a problem. In "Wrinkle", the beings that showed up were three witches, similar to humans in appearance, who helped the children find their lost father. In "Wind", the being is a "dragon" that turns out to be a "cherubim", but not one of the normal chubby cherubs with wings and a fat body that I was used to seeing in religious art; nor is it even a humanoid spirit-type creature like the witches. Instead, this "cherubim" is a many-eyed winged monster like something out of a discarded chapter of Revelation. As a kid, this turned me off right away. I never liked fantasy books unless they were standard fairy tales or historic myths, and I never got into the "Christian fantasy" work of C.S. Lewis and the like either.

I also found that Charles Wallace, the "boy genius", now aged six, was OK in "Wrinkle" but in this book he began to get on my nerves. I couldn't see why Meg seemed to always have to be saving this kid from something. If he is so smart, why can't he look after himself and let Meg have her own life? Here, Charles Wallace is dying from some rare disease and Meg and Calvin end up shrinking down and going into Charles's mitochondria to combat it. Again, the book lost me as I was not as a child(and still am not) that interested in medical stories or cell biology and the whole "shrink down and go in someone's body" seemed totally copped from the "Fantastic Voyage" TV show (which had been running in cartoon form around that time).

After several failed attempts to enjoy this book and also an attempt to read L'Engle's book "Many Waters" about the more "normal" Murry twins, I decided to give up on the saga of the family and just enjoy "Wrinkle" as a stand-alone book. I already knew Calvin grew up to be a famous scientist and married Meg because he appears as Polyhymnia O'Keefe's father in "Arm of the Starfish" and really that was all I needed to know. I am sure there are folks who absolutely love "Wind in the Door" as much as, or more than, "Wrinkle in Time", but I am sadly not one of them.

"This book had multiple layers of themes, from the limits of human adaptability to the definition of life. These are expanded upon with discussion about how they connect, and how everything connects — and affects — literally everything else. Despite the quest structure, the grand finale wasn’t about fighting a “big bad,” but about using these themes to overcome obstacles. Such a lesson is applicable to just about every conflict."

An excerpt from my full review on the Speculative Chic blog.

I was excited to get Wrinkle in Time for my son because I loved it SO much growing up. I never did read the books that followed. He ended up loving Wrinkle in Time as much as I did. I ended up buying the whole series and none of them really compared to the first. These are still really good books for any child though. Everyone is different. Someone who doesn't like one book, may be loved by the next. I read this one alongside my son and it was just okay.

My daughter previously read the book A Wrinkle in Time and I couldn't wait to purchase this one to read next. However, she struggled to be interested in this one to the point I finally gave her permission to quit reading it. She zipped right through the first one and loved it so I was very disappointed that her excitement was killed with A Wind In The Door. She told me it just wasn't as good as the first one and not to buy anymore in the series. She described the first one as facinating, super cool, and exciting. This one was uneventful, boring, and lame in her words. For what it's worth, we have found The Door Within Trilogy by Wayne Thomas Batson to be awesome books! They are longer but such a good read for a young reader.

I read “A Wrinkle in Time” years ago. I had heard my fourth-grade teacher say that it was too difficult for kids my age and wanted to find out for myself. It wasn’t too difficult at all – complex, sure, but definitely a story a bright elementary schooler could handle. I loved it, actually. I remember trying to read this sequel a while later but getting tripped up when Charles Wallace started going on about mitochondria. Now that I’ve taken some biology classes and have a vague idea of what mitochondria actually are, I decided to come back to it. And I wish I had better things to say about “A Wind in the Door.” I truly do. But sadly, the great balance between science and fiction from “A Wrinkle in Time” went flying out the window in this volume.

It all starts when Charles Wallace says he sees dragons in the garden. Meg knew her little brother was having a rough time at school, where he runs so many rings around his teacher and fellow students that Saturn could stand to borrow some. But she didn’t know he was feeling weak, or getting dark circles under his eyes, or, apparently, hallucinating. Except he’s not. Meg figures out what Charles has been seeing, and even if it isn’t dragons, it’s definitely out of the ordinary. But it may be too late – Charles is deathly ill (something to do with his mitochondria), and if Meg, her old friend Calvin, and her new friends can’t help, she may lose him.

I’m not sure I can put my finger on what exactly went wrong with this book. All I know is that after a certain point, I didn’t know what was going on and I really didn’t care. I never worried about what was going to happen next (except once, in the case of a minor character), and I could never remember what had happened a few pages before.

I think it’s because the book got too science-fictiony for me. I’m really not a science person. I don’t get all that fancy stuff about stars and galaxies and whatnot. I was able to bear with it in “A Wrinkle in Time” because it seemed like the characters were learning along with me, and the denizens teaching them (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which) were so endearingly bad at posing as humans that it mellowed out the all-knowing component. But in this book, the denizens know what they’re doing and are ever so much wiser than anyone else, and the human characters trust them without really thinking. (Plus one of them is named Blajeny. I’m sorry; I just can’t take anything named Blajeny seriously.) There isn’t even any reference to any past adventures the human friends have had together, so there’s no REASON for them to trust or believe in otherworldly creatures. They just DO.

Additionally, nothing’s fleshed out. The “villains” are literally tiny balls of evil, and we don’t get to see their impact on the world like we did in “A Wrinkle in Time” (think of the atmosphere of Camazotz. So perfectly eerie and so not present in this novel). There aren’t as many interesting side characters, and the ones that are there are just boring (except the surprisingly layered, though not very subtle, Mr. Jenkins). And then there’s L’Engle’s tendency to throw around science-fictiony-type terms: in book one it was “tesseract,” and in book two it’s “kythe.” But it works better in book one. Tesseracts weren’t over-explained, and kything was; Meg had significant problems with tessering, and she didn’t with kything. (It got kind of annoying how good she was at it.) I kind of liked seeing the Murrys again, but I miss book one. I miss it a lot.

I’m sorry to have just done a huge comparison of “Wrinkle in Time” versus “Wind in the Door,” but I hope it helped you figure out what you’ll think of this next book. It may sound awesome to you, or it may not. But I’d recommend giving it a try to see whether it works for you. Regardless of whether you like “Wind in the Door,” if you liked “Wrinkle in Time,” read the next book in the series. I’m certainly going to. Maybe it’s just the second-book slump – and I’ll never know if I don’t keep going.

I just do not understand why everyone thinks these books are so great. I've now read the first two to my daughter, and while she liked the first one, her interest diminished in this second one. I thought that this one would be better than the first, because the first half of the book had a story that seemed to be developing really well. Then they started traveling through space and size and it stopped making sense. There's no explanation as to why Sporos must deepen, or why the teacher is teaching these particular humans, or why the echthroi do what they do. The only thing that's clear is that these particular humans must do something right away or the universe will collapse. Like the first book, there is very little character development and the plot is overly simplistic. Thankfully I've convinced my daughter to switch to the Chronicles of Narnia for our reading time, and I'm hoping she forgets this series so that I don't have to come back to it.

Now, I loved "A Wrinkle In Time," but this one was a disappointment. It was very boring and the story went no where. The characters were as bland as ever, and it was frighteningly weird and confusing. I thought the plot was unique just like the 1st one mind you, but not really my thing. I do recommend reading "A Wrinkle In Time," but don't even bother reading this one. "A Wrinkle In Time" has a very good ending and can be read as a stand-alone. I will not read the rest.

Love this set of books.

Meg's journeys are not over yet. She has matured a bit, but it still very over-dramatic (like a typical teen I guess). Her little brother Charles Wallace isn't fitting in well at school, keeps getting beat up and is sick. In order to save him, she must work with Calvin, a cherubim and Mr. Jennings the principal that she really can't stand.

Some of the description seems too complicated for me to grasp, I may not be a scientist, but how does a kid get this? It was weird - naming and love etc, but a positive theme.