An Acceptable Time (Time Quintet #5) by Madeleine L’Engle

"Healers, Druids, Bishops, Teenagers who understand Quantum Mechanics/Time Lapses, Tesseracts. Let it all stew with angsty guilt-ridden YA romance and you have the conclusion to one of the most unique series I’ve ever read.”

⭐

Pros: I did like imagining the woods and surorundings, it had a very New England but eerie, misty Stonehenge vibe//There was a Dog/The connection with the land and the “Presence” was marginally interesting.

Cons: Goodness me, did L’Engle love her Apochrypha/Scripture, it was appreciated in an academic sense but as a storytelling device, it fell flat for me//I felt distant from Polly, the protagonist from the start, she was just kind of there at her grandparents with no explanation. It felt like a failed reboot/This book could've easily ended 100 pages earlier.

Full Review:

Polly, Meg's daughter, is living with her grandparents, the Murray's. She's been sent there since the local educaiton system was lacking and she's inherited her mother's genius so, she's learning more from her former physicist Grandparents then any school could hope to offer. Also she gets to wander the surrounding lands. She sees the Star watching rock, the large black snake, Louise the Larger and also bumps into her grandparents old friends, Dr. Louise and her Brother, the Bishop Colubra.

As random happenstance would have it, Polly and the Bishop have the unique ability to travel back and forth through a time lapse that was opened by the tesser-act (I think, my brain kind of staticked out). Also, Polly's randomly runs into an old school-mate/friend, Zachary. He admits that his heart's bad, that he's dying and he just, he wants her to promise that she'll try and help. Like, no pressure.

It all leads to a ecrebral but literal journey 3,000 years into the past where Zachary, Bishop Colubra and Polly have to help the two tribes across the Lake try to find a way to live in peace.

I think I was hoping for a satisfactory, logical conclusion, or at least, a sense of cohesion to the series, in this book. That's not what I got. Through the series, each Murray child gets to have their own adventure, in a sense. So, I think I was hoping this book would connect all the threads but, I think it was all just lost on me. This was definitely a unique series but I think the first book will always outshine the rest.

Comments

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