A Wind In the Door by Madeleine L'Engle Book Review

 A Wind in the Door 

(The Time Quintet #2, Kairos #2)

By Madeline L'Engle 

Published Year: 1973

Page Count: 236 pages 

Medium Used: ipad Air 

Genre : Classics, Adventure, Childrens Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Young Adult, Speculative Fiction, 2026-read. 

Rating : 3.5/5 

Once again, Meg Murry is on an adventure to save her youngest brother, Charles Wallace. Like in the first book, she shows gumption and resolve, using intuition and some luck to get him out of death's snare. In this book, she fights and defeats Echthroi, masters of War and Destruction, seeking to destroy/annihilate/X the creation by destroying Charles Wallace. Farandolae within Mitochondria are fictitious creation by the author which the Echthroi target for destruction in Charles' body. The theory goes that if the Mitochondria die, our body cannot live, similarly, if the farandolae die, the Mitochondria cannot live. Death of all farandolae will eventually lead to the death of the body. So the Echthroi and Meg with her team fight each other over farandolae in Charles' body - while one side tries to save them from death, the other side prods them into destroying all the other healthy cells. I felt the episodes covering this fight a bit dragging and soporific - I put aside my iPad many times while reading this section, hence the reduced overall rating  - also I thought what was being done during the fight wasn't super clear. They were talking telepathically - referred to as Kything  - to each other and no one knows what to do until Meg does, which clearly makes her the hero. I felt character development could have been better and that the author took more time to establish their natures so that their motives and actions that came later on made more sense. Much of the plot went into solving the riddles that there was less time for anything else. 

Charles Wallace is going to school and getting beat up by his school mates on a regular basis. This is because he is super smart, out of their league and totally a disaster at adapting. This is worrying Meg and her mother. On top of that, he is looking pale and getting breathless walking short distances. Mrs Murry wonders if something is wrong with his farandolae and Mitochondria. She pours herself relentlessly into this research. At the start of the story, Charles tells his sister, Meg, that he has seen a drive of dragons in their backyard. Meg initially doesn't believe him but later they meet Blajerny, a teacher from another solar system, a cherubim Progo which has many eyes and wings on its body, which can disappear and reappear as it wishes, Louise the snake which is also a teacher like Blajerny and as usual Calvin is in the team/game. Blajerny teams up Meg and Progo and tells them that they must solve three tests and help him defeat the Echthroi in the process. 

The first test is for her to identify her real headmaster Mr. Jenkins from a set of three versions of him. While one is real, the other two are imposters and they are Echthroi. They pitch to her how they would address the issues of bullying and failing health of Charles Wallace. Based on her intuition and guidance from Progo, she clears test 1. Then, Blajerny takes Meg, Mr Jenkins, Calvin and Progo to his home planet from where they can enter the world of Charles' Mitochondria. Time inside the Mitochondria is super slow and each heart beat in human time takes a decade of the farandolae time. There they meet newly born cell/baby farandolae Sporos in the form of a tiny mouse like creature. It tells them that as it matures, it will grow roots and deepen into a tree,rooting itself to the spot. There are forests of trees around them which are other healthy farae. The Echthroi too reach this space and seduce the baby farae into destroying other farae and themselves. The remaining two tests lie in preventing the destruction of these baby farae and also safeguarding the older healthy farae within Charles' body. Meg eventually clears both the tests through persuasion and timely action, thereby rescuing her brother. She has to reason with Sporos to bring them out of the spell of the Echthroi and then defeat the Echthroi altogether. I felt this part could have been a bit trimmed and pruned. I wondered, how a young girl could have been able to figure out the words to say,  the actions to take in the face of this universe shattering problem.