A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeline L'Engle Book Review

 A Swiftly Tilting Planet 

(Time Quintet #3, Kairos #3)

By Madeline L'Engle 

Published Year: 1978

Page Count: 236 pages

Medium Used: ipad Air 

Genre: Classics, Childrens Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, SFF, Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Unicorns, Time Travel,Adventure, 2026-read. 

Rating: 5/5 😍😍😍😍😍

What a brilliant book! This book is quite unexpected and quite a leap when compared to the two previous books in the series. It didn't read like childrens fiction. Because the plot is quite complex to grasp. And also the main characters are no longer kids. Charles Wallace is fifteen now. Meg Murry O'Keefe is pregnant with her first baby.There are many threads that come together and sew into a comprehensible plot when nearing the end but until then it is quite a jumble of repetitive character names and events. The idea of the book is novel and its execution kept me gripped from page one till the end. The author has masterfully blended themes of mythology, time travel, body possession and historical fiction. 

Meg's family gets together to celebrate Thanksgiving. The kids are all very much grown up. Mr. Murry gets a call from the president of USA that El Rabioso (Mad Dog Branzillo) from Vespugia, a (fictitious) small country in South America is threatening nuclear war because he thinks the west has abused energy consumption and ravaged the planet with negligent climate control. Meg's mother in law, who rarely mingles with people, gives a rune to Charles Wallace and entrusts him with preventing the situation. He goes to the star gazing rock in their backyard pasture and utters the rune aloud. A moon white unicorn materializes out of thin air and transports him to different time periods (which ever are guided by and directed by the wind). He kythes( mental telepathy ) with Meg all along and she plays an important part in his journey. All the times he travels to, he is expected to go "within" an important character and change some event( like a Must-have-been) so that in the end, this war situation is averted. 

There are two brothers,  Madoc and Gwydyr, who flee from their land of Wales to America, after their father the king dies, to escape their elder brothers' fighting for the throne. After landing, they separate and Madoc comes to assume that his brother is dead. When he is about to marry the local leader's daughter, Gwydyr shows up and threatens to kill the tribe unless he gets the bride and becomes king to the people. With Charles' help from inside his mind, he inadvertantly beats the lusty and greedy brother. This is the first of the Must-have-been situation that the unicorn and Charles change. In the fight between good and evil, they tip the winning scale in good's favor.After this, they attempt to go to a definite time in the past but they get so thoroughly battered by Echthroi(yes, the same villains from book 2 who are pests to creation and good will) that they barely manage to come out alive. After this also there is a situation where they are plunged into ice cold water by the Echthroi and their rescue falls into  Meg's hands. Whenever they try to control and use intelligence in guiding their trysts, they face obstacles. So they leave the encounters and events to Wind's choice. 

A woman who is possibly blood related to the Madoc tribe is about to be hanged for practicing witchcraft. It is a rumor, a witchhunt and she being an Indian with black hair, blue eyes becomes an easy target. Right around the time she gives birth to her child, rains stop, crops fail and children die of summer sickness. Again Charles helps in preventing her death. Mom O'Keefe was also a descendant of the Madoc line and Charles helps rescuing her mother's and grandma's deaths. Then finally, he alters the fate of the world by preventing the birth line of Mad Dog Branzilla. He plays with the family lines and brings about the birth of the dictator in the Madoc line rather than the Gwydyr line. Even though they are both brothers and same blood, how does this distinction work, right? Yet. That's the story! 

Stunning piece of work. So much of an improvement over the first two books. Highly recommend!! I just cannot understand, of all the titles that can be conferred on this book, why one single episode has dictated to become the title! Lolz. While in first two books, the main characters travel to foreign planets and other worlds, in this one, the place remains the same while time changes.