Book Review

An Acceptable Time, Madeline L'Engle
Last of the Time Quintet and my least favorite. The main character in this story is Polly, the child of Meg and Calvin O'Keefe. She goes to visit with her Grandparent's on their farm which seems to be the center of all the magic of these books. It combines the concept of Mr. Murray's tesseract with the mystical properties of the familiar star watching rock to open a time circle which she slips in and out of. Also capable of moving in the circle is a retired bishop and her strange suitor, Zachary. It returns to the setting of The People of the Wind that were featured in the third book only their time predates the events of that story. The bishop is the retired brother of Dr. Louise who discovers the circle and makes contact with the tribe before Polly's arrival. Zachary tracks her down from abroad to court her but is more focused on himself. The Murrys aren't as open to the supernatural as they were when Meg was a girl, so they're uncharacteristically overprotective and grouchy. But they can't stop the other three characters from becoming trapped in the past where they must mediate a land war between two tribes while they try to keep Polly from being sacrificed under their belief that she's a goddess that can bring rain.
So, returning to a previous setting takes away from the uniqueness demonstrated in each book and the characters are much more two dimensional which made the romance angles weird and unbelievable. I wasn't happy with the last book, but at least there were a lot of creative elements. There weren't really any in this one. The shades of  ecumenicalism (in the broad sense) that I always felt from the author in the other books are displayed undisguised in this one along with more lamentations of how the human race sucks. The book spends about 8 chapters of tedious lecturing by the unrelatable characters before the action starts. Then the action is bogged down with yet more philosophical pontification. Surprisingly, the last chapter is really good. The action solves the problems and makes some very good points regarding the Zachary's selfishness. If she'd focused more on the characters than her ideologies it would've been a good book. But there wasn't enough meat in the story to support an entire book. Hence, the incessant speechifying. She should've stuck with Meg and Charles Wallace and more imaginative scenarios. This book feels like a storm that's blowing itself out. She has other books featuring different families, but I think I'll just wait for one to fall into my lap before I try them out.