On Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet

I can't recall when I first read A Wrinkle in Time anymore - I'm pretty sure I was in middle school at the time. I had to read it for a class assignment, I believe. And if I recall, I didn't necessarily love it, but I enjoyed how smart it made me feel. I mean, after reading it, I became someone who knew what a tesseract was. So. There.

(Mind you, a tesseract is actually a real thing, but it's nothing like what it is in Wrinkle. But of course I didn't know that at the time. Oh well.)

I read it again some years ago (I think about 10 years ago), and liked it quite a bit more than the first time around. That's when I decided - finally - to give the rest of the series a go.

Now, with the Wrinkle in Time movie (finally!) upon us, I have to say: yes, I'm excited for the movie. Based on what I've seen and read about it so far, it seems like the creators might be on to something special with it. But the rest of the books (after Wrinkle) were...well, underwhelming, to put it kindly.

This happens often with sequels/series, of course. (Especially, for some reason, movie sequels. It's not quite as bad with book sequels, but still too often.) Sometimes it's hard to say exactly what goes wrong with subsequent titles. They just don't have quite the same magic as the first entry, I suppose.

It's sadly, painfully clear what went wrong with Wrinkle's sequels, though. So let's explore that.

A Wrinkle in Time was an incredibly visionary book that took place throughout several corners of space and time. And, importantly, as the plot goes on, its scope increases exponentially - in fact, compared to other books, the rate of increase is much faster and larger than average. What begins as a search for a missing father quickly snowballs into an enormous spiritual war spanning space and time. Books just don't explode like this very often; it's to L'Engle's credit that she handled it so deftly.

Then we get to the second book, A Wind in the Door.

Well then. Let's begin with a synopsis of the plot from Wikipedia (accessed 1.29.18):

Main character Meg Murry is worried about her brother Charles Wallace, a 6-year-old genius bullied at school by the other children. The new principal of the elementary school is the former high school principal, Mr. Jenkins, who often disciplined Meg, and who Meg is sure has a grudge against her whole family. Meg tries to enlist Jenkins's help in protecting her brother, but is unsuccessful. Later, Meg discovers that Charles Wallace has a progressive disease that is leaving him short of breath. Their mother, a microbiologist, suspects it may be a disorder of his mitochondria and his mitochondria's farandolae, (fictional) micro-organelles inside mitochondria.

One afternoon, Charles Wallace tells Meg of a "drive of dragons" in their back yard, where he and Meg thereupon discover a pile of unusual feathers. Later, Meg has a frightening encounter with a monstrous facsimile of Mr. Jenkins. That night, Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe discover that Charles Wallace's "drive of dragons" is an extraterrestrial "cherubim" named Proginoskes (nicknamed 'Progo' by Meg), under the tutelage of the immense humanoid Blajeny, who recruits the three children to counteract the Echthroi.

Meg's first task, on the next day, is to distinguish the real Mr. Jenkins from two Echthroi doubles, by identification of the (potential) goodness in him despite her personal grudge. The protagonists then learn that Echthroi are destroying Charles Wallace's farandolae, and travel inside one of his mitochondria, to persuade a larval farandola, named Sporos, to accept its role as a mature fara, against the urgings of an Echthros. 

...because all of that makes perfect sense, and sounds like one cohesive book, doesn't it?

False. The book is a jumbled mess which begins with a down-to-earth-bullying situation and ends in a veritable Magic School Bus episode in which they shrink and travel through Charles' blood. Oh, and there are dragons and angels and some sort of immature amoeba along the way...or something.

All of the space and time mysteries from Wrinkle have disappeared. The deeply unsettling social commentary from the cookie-cutter-esque planet, the majesty and wisdom of the Mrs W's, the intricate workings of the tesseract - all gone the way of the dinosaurs. Now we have...well, that.^^^

The third book in the series - A Swiftly-Tilting Planet - plays out in a nominally more interesting way...at least until you stop and think about the synopsis, which is, basically:

Nuclear war is imminent. Luckily Charles Wallace (now 16 years old) is given a magical...you know, incantation/recital/abra-kadabra thingy which he chants outside one night until a unicorn comes to take him back in time, where he telepathically links up with various people in the past in order to change the present and prevent the war. (Which is, of course, clearly the most effective way to head off a nuclear war. Props to him.)

No really. That about sums it up. I wish I was kidding.

I mean, Swiftly was cohesive, at least.

Oh, and the fourth book - Many Waters - you ask? That's the one in which two of the minor characters from the other books finally get their turn at an adventure, by going back in time to the age of Noah (of the ark-builder variety) to...well, who knows why they're there, actually. Help herd the animals, I guess. Oh, and they help fight off the evil shape-shifting demons - here called Nephilim - who like to disguise themselves as animals, and occasionally try to seduce teenage boys.

(At this point, I'd insert an emoji for a a dry, sarcastic sniff, if only there was one.)

Really, though: what on earth went wrong? How could L'Engle have started with something so brilliant and moving and bigger than space with Wrinkle, then turn it into a Magic School Bus episode, then a time-travelling unicorn, and finally a replay of Noah's Ark with pedophilic demons?

It's a mystery, to be sure.

If you're scratching your head and thinking WTF? - well, friend, so am I.

Hopefully they won't bother making the sequels into movies. My wish that that they'll nail Wrinkle, then quit while they're ahead.

REVIEW: The City & The City - China Miéville

• Year first released:  2009
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780345497512
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Ballantine Books
• My rating (out of 5):  3

The City & The City is one of those books that tries very hard to defy classification. I borrowed it from the library, where it was labelled as a fantasy. I can't agree with this genre, though. I've also seen it referred to as a sci-fi in several places - definitely also a fallacy. I suppose that, primarily, we could call it a mystery - the plot, at least, is a crime drama - but the setting of the book is unlike anything else you've come across in a mystery - enough so, that somehow calling the book a mystery feels misleading. Rather, the setting would fall squarely into the realm of magic realism...except that there's nothing actually magical or supernatural about it.

Confusing, I know.

Now then. Since the main conceit of the book revolves around this setting, I'll attempt to describe it for you:

There's really no easy way to explain it - and Miéville takes almost the entirety of the book to slowly work through the intricacies of this setup - but The City & The City takes place in two cities: the average, everyday, European city of Besźel; and the higher-class, cleaner (and also European) city of Ul Qoma.

The catch to all of this, you ask?

Besźel and Ul Qoma occupy the same space geographically. They have most of the same streets, parks, even buildings. A person walking on the sidewalk might be in one city, or he might be in the other. There is no separating wall, no change in climate, no distance between them.

The only separation between the two cities are psychological and legal. The citizens of each city are taught to completely ignore all of the facets of the other city - the other citizens, the other buildings, the other trees. They must, by law, "unsee" (or "unhear," "unsmell," etc.) every single aspect of the other city. And "breaching" this ignorance is a crime that comes with severe penalties.

Travelling into the other city is an intricate, time-consuming affair. A passport must be secured and an intense orientation process completed. The irony is that, in order to "travel" to the other city, one must drive all the way to and through a border checkpoint and, for all intents and purposes, make a u-turn. Now that you've "entered" the other city, though - even though you're literally still driving on the same street you were before the border crossing - all of your "unseeing" must be done in reverse: you must ignore all of the people and buildings and landmarks you're used to, and instead focus only on these elements of the other city.

A small example: partway through the book, the main character, Tyador (who is a police officer in Besźel), must cross into Ul Qoma. There, he begins working with an Ul Qoman detective. At dinner one night, the two discover that they live just down the street from each other. Having "unseen" each other all their lives, though, they were never aware of the other's existence - nor even the existence of the other person's house.

Weird.

Of course there's nothing even remotely similar to this in our world to which we might compare the cities. As a reader, the concept takes some getting used to. It is certainly one that requires you to activate your suspension of disbelief. And if for no reason other than exploring this fascinating idea - seeing all the explanations for it, all the little details and ways in which it plays out - it's worth suspending it.

This is the world of The City & The City. After all that description, I'm sure I don't need to tell you how deeply imaginative the entire thing is; it is, without a doubt, the best part of the book.

This statement, though, is actually good and bad. Miéville clearly went to incredible lengths to create such a phenomenal world, only to populate it with average characters and a mildly above average murder mystery. It almost feels as though the twin-city setting of City is too good to have been spent on all of the other elements that go into the book.

To be fair, the parts of the murder mystery which directly tie into the twin cities are certainly unique and interesting. The way the investigation has to proceed, the limits of the detective's authority, the legal loopholes that are exploited by various characters - these items are fascinating, and show just how much thought and care Miéville put into the book. They're just not quite enough to make up for the other elements of the book as a whole.

I hope I'm not making the book sound like a complete loss. The twin-city concept alone made it worth reading. If Miéville were to write another book that takes place in Besźel/Ul Qoma, I would absolutely check it out. I just hope that, in such a case, the plot would be more up to speed with the phenomenal setting.