Rating: 
Summary: Excellent! But not my favourite!
Review: Meg Murry-O'Keefe, now married to Calvin (no surprise) and expecting her first child, is home with the rest of the Murrys for Thanksgiving. Calvin is away in London giving a groundbreaking paper to a major conference, and so isn't present when Meg's father gets a disturbing call from the President of the United States. Mad Dog Branzillo, the military dictator of a South American republic is doing more than sabre-rattling with his nuclear weapons, and the President is not hopeful about the prospects for avoiding all-out nuclear war. The world could well end within twenty-four hours unless this very unreasonable despot is made to see reason.
Calvin's mother unexpectedly provides the family with a clue, however. It seems that Branzillo may be a very distant relation of the family. Fifteen year old Charles Wallace pounces on this very small hope and, with the help of a unicorn named Gaudior, kythes (see "A Wind in the Door") backward in time and experiences the joys and sorrows of the O'Keefe's ancient ancestors through their eyes. The story of the extensive family that eventually produces the insane Branzillo is explored, and Charles Wallace tries to subtly alter the 'might have beens' in the hopes of bringing about a better present.
Can Charles Wallace do it? He has the help of Gaudior, and Meg Murry provides moral support via kythe, but opposing Charles Wallace are the Echthroi (see "A Wrinkle in Time" and "A Wind in the Door"), who would be quite happy to see the Earth vanish in a mass of mushroom clouds.
"A Swiftly Tilting Planet" has its foot in both the Time Quartet and the O'Keefe family series of novels ("Arm of the Starfish", "A House Like a Lotus", etc), and not just because Meg is pregnant with Polyhymnia O'Keefe. On the Time Quartet side, it features Charles Wallace kything and travelling back through time in order to save the world. On the O'Keefe family side, we are presented with a far more complex story about human interrelationships. The drama of the family that produces the insane Branzillo is told in compelling fashion. It is, indeed, the main focus of the book, relegating Charles Wallace (and Meg even moreso) to the status of watcher as events unfold.
The book is the deepest and most complex of the Time Quartet novels, but I didn't enjoy it as much as "A Wrinkle in Time" and "A Wind in the Door". My reasons for this are quite fickle. Charles Wallace may be a fascinating character, and his exclusion from the O'Keefe family series of novels is unfortunate, but I wanted Meg to have a more active role in this story, pregnancy or no pregnancy. And relegating Calvin O'Keefe to a phoned-in cameo was unforgivable.
"A Swiftly Tilting Planet" still has to rank near the top of the eight Time Quartet / O'Keefe family series novels. It is the most ambitious and it is the best written. I fully expect to read it again and, perhaps then, I will be less fickle.
Rating: 
Summary: A Suspenseful Fantasy of Time Travel
Review: A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle combines the threats of nuclear war in today's society with the more complicated science of time travel. Mad Dog Branzillo, a South American Dictator, frightens the whole world with possibilities of dropping a nuclear bomb on America. It is up to Charles Wallace, a 15-year-old genius, his sister, Meg, and a mysterious rune to save the world from destruction. Charles' mission is to travel back in time with a unicorn named Gaudior to alter the past. In order to do this incredibly difficult and dangerous task, he must venture inside of people's souls to live with them and change the course of their lives so that Mad Dog Branzillo will not be born as a nemesis. Guided by this almighty rune, calling on all heaven with its power, and kything, or sending messages through the mind, with Meg, he fights to triumph over evil and to seek peace.
This book delighted me because of the great mystery of the time travel. I would recommend this book to anyone else who enjoys time travel and good fiction. I would not suggest this book to a person who does not enjoy fantasy or other books of the sort. A Swiftly Tilting Planet is fun to read and I would suggest that everybody read it and the others in the series.
Rating:
Summary: Buy or borrow this book! But make it the book! NOT the tape!
Review: A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite books ever, so I read the sequals with much anticipation. This book was a little disappointing mainly because Meg and Charles Wallace are not featured that often. Most of the book revolves around a historical family, one side bad and one good, and the attempt to go back in time and change the outcome of events in order to prevent war in the present. The time travelling aspect is interesting, and the talking unicorn is very lovable, but I just did not find these historical characters very interesting. Also did not care for the idea that one family line can be inherently bad. Still an enjoyable read, and L'engle has many heartfelt quotations, and Meg's family is still as loving and inspirational. I was also disappointed that Meg has lost her spunkiness. But I guess that is just part of growing up, and she is growing up into a beautiful woman, just like her mother.
Rating:
Summary: This is probably my favorite of all the Time Trilogy books!
Review: After reading A Wrinkle In Time and A Wind In the Door, (both of which are also fantastic) I had to read this one. I was blown away reading this! This IS a complicated book-many times while I was reading I turned back to some of the other parts to understand a bit better. But that was the delightful and interesting part about it! I loved the whole "mad dog" name thing and the way each of the people Charles visited were connected, and yet very different. I disagree with people who talk about how it's bad that Meg is only a pregnant housewife and Calvin is a famous scientist. It says in the later books about Poly (Meg's oldest daughter) that Meg works with mathematics, numbers and all that. I reccomend this to L'Engle or fantasy fans, especially those who've read the first Time Trilogy books. But if you can't handle complicated plots, numerous characters and different settings, wait a few more years to read this so that you can fully appreciate this book!
Rating:
Summary: Definitely one of my all-time favorites!
Review: I can't really remember when I first read Madeleine L'Engle. It must have been before I was 12. But she is one of my favorite authors, and this book is my favorite of hers! Each time I read it I feel like I get more out of it. I can't wait to get back home and read this book again.
This book IS complex. I would recommend it to anyone who is of the opinion they can think, regardless of age. Yes, it is disturbing at times. But that's no reason to prevent a child from reading it, for life is disturbing at times. What's important here is that good triumphs over evil in the end, due to choices people make, and due to a higher power. And I don't think there is anything wrong with being pregnant! Meg is probably thinking of writing her thesis or something at the time, it is kind of besides the point of the story.
Also fascinating are the historical references to an apparently European genetically influenced tribe in America long before Columbus. It makes me wonder, and I also wonder where L'Engle came up with the rune. Really, I can't say enough, just read this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I just re-read A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET after many, many years of walking past it on my bookshelf. In the meanwhile I've completed graduate work in Medieval studies, specialized (somewhat) in Medieval Celtic culture, and read THE MABINOGION more than once. It seems a shame that L'Engle did not do even a minimum amount of homework for this novel. The story was not bad, less snobbish than many of hers, but fatally flawed by errors. I feel that the scholarship behind writing for young adults needs to be especially cautious and error-free.
First, when L'Engle wrote this book did she know anything about Mendelian genetics? Blue eyes in an overwhelmingly dark-brown eyed population would have disappeared very rapidly, certainly by the third generation--unless (horrors) they practiced incest.
Next, some comments on the Welsh background. Owain Gwynedd was a real king of North Wales, a very important king who lived in the 12th century. He was NOT a pagan but a Christian., yet L'Engle made his son Madoc or Madog non-Christian in belief. Certainly there were many pre-Christian elements in 12th century Welsh society--but Madoc would never have kept referring to "the gods" and would have prayed to Christ and the saints.
The Madoc-Indian story is an old one, perfectly acceptable in a fantasy, but L'Engle ruins the Branwen story! The Branwen tale in THE MABINOGION is not the sweet rather sad story told by Beezie's (Irish!) Grandma. It describes a truly sadistic, vengeful, gory, "ethnic cleansing" war between North Wales and Ireland in which everyone in Ireland is killed except five (pregnant) Irish women. Such a tale would hardly be passed down in Ireland, not even in L'Engle's wildly cleaned-up version--and why would an Irish king flee from Ireland by ship anyway? If the original story was supposed to have become garbled over the years, then L'Engle should have explained that.
Does L'Engle know how to pronounce Spanish and Welsh? I doubt it. As a result, the name "Branzillo" made little sense. Granting that "Zilla" is supposed to be a (rather unlikely) Native American name, the /ll/ might have been pronounced "ull" as in English if the Llawcaes spoke English as their home tongue. But if the Llawcaes spoke Welsh they would have heard and spelled the name not "Zilla" but "Sila." There is no /z/ in Welsh. Even more important, the /l/ sound in Welsh, from Medieval times, has been /l/. Welsh /ll/ is a very complex phoneme, a faint sibilant plus /th/ plus /f/ plus /l/. In Welsh, "Zilla" would be pronounced something like "Sithfla." The Spanish /ll/ is just as troublesome. In Spain and Venezuela it is "lyuh", in the rest of Spanish America the pronunciation is "yuh." "Branzillo" would be pronounced in South American Spanish "Bronzeeyo." How can any of these names be connected "by ear"? They can't.
Sorry, that's just too much carelessness.
Rating:
Summary: Just too weird
Review: I read the first two books, and they were very weird, but I still liked them all right and would have given them 3-4 stars. This one was just TOO weird. I completely didn't understand parts of it and abandoned it about halfway through. Very challenging and not highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: a mixed bag
Review: In this sequel to "A Wrinkle in Time," the Murray family is again called upon to save the world: a mad South American dictator is threatening nuclear annihilation. Charles Wallace, brilliant, telepathic, and youngest of the Murrays, meets a unicorn and goes on a trip back in time to avert catastrophe.
In various past eras, Charles Wallace enters a succession of host minds via his telepathy and witnesses a sequence of events, trying to grasp the situation. It boils down to a primal conflict of two patriarchs: two brothers, one good, one evil, fought (shades of Cain and Abel?) Except here, the good one kills the evil one. But both brothers sire children, and their descendants continue on down the centuries. Charles Wallace must discover their relation to the mad dictator, and how he must change the past.
Understanding this process is made difficult by L'Engle's complicated naming scheme. We're introduced to at least twenty different characters, and many of them have names which differ only by a couple of letters. L'Engle's point, I suppose, is that good and evil can sometimes be so akin as to be barely distinguishable. However, it hampers the reader's ability to sort out what is already a disjointed story.
L'Engle means well, but there are several things about her world that are bogus. First, the protagonists are allowed to go back in time to change the past. Perhaps L'Engle is making a comment about divine providence--but you can't just go back and change the past, even to avoid global nuclear holocaust. In real life, we have to accept the situation we're in and clean up the messes we've made, and teaching kids otherwise probably isn't a good idea. Also, there's no dealing with the ethical consequences of time travel; although even the smallest change in the past would have innumerable effects on everyone's lives, not all of them good, this problem of time travel isn't even mentioned.
Second, the Murrays are all brilliant: the father's a Nobel Prize level physicist, the mother a distinguished biologist, Charles Wallace has superhuman intelligence and psychic powers, Meg is a math whiz, etc. This is the dearest fantasy of all clever science nerd kids who've ever felt misunderstood by their family and peers. It leads to a sense of us (the smart people) vs. them (the dumb people). Granted, in this book, L'Engle introduces Mrs. O'Keefe, Calvin's mother, who appears vulgar, uneducated and bitter, but who turns out to be the key to saving the world. Nonetheless, the "family of geniuses" idea, besides being done to death, doesn't seem healthy, and it's a problem with this book as it is with all of L'Engle's books that I've read.
Otherwise, the book is pretty good for kids: it's surprisingly mature in its depiction of evil: greed, intolerance, and the violence that results when people give in to their fears without thinking. And the Thanksgiving feast and cheerful, affectionate banter of the Murray clan are a welcome contrast. But for the reasons mentioned above, I can't recommend it without reservation.
Rating: 
Summary: HELP ME!
Review: last summer i had 2 read this book 4 school. it went bi so slow and i just hated it. it seamed like she was in the same place w/ the same ppl and the same idea. the first book was ok, but this was a horable sequal. sry "swiftly tilting planet" lovers, but this is just not mi book
Rating:
Summary: My absolute favorite
Review: Out of the Time Quarter, this is my favorite, although I still haven't read Many Waters, yet. In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Charles Wallace must go through time and "inhabit" the bodies of various men, might-have-beens, to somehow alter the course of the present and prevent nuclear war. I loved the concept on how everything is connected and how each of the people Charles Wallace inhabitted through each time period were all interrelated. The story ties each person in to the next, crossing thousands of years and showing how one decision from each person can change the future of the world. It was fascinating to go back in time and experience what it was like during the Salem witch trials, the civil war, the early 20th century. It was like I was going through someone's attic and finding all this history or like I was going on an archeological dig, finding out about the past centuries. I felt like I was actually with Charles Wallace, as if I was actually Meg, Charles's sister, watching him travel through time to save the planet. After reading A Wrinkle in Time, and then this one, I must say that there is a marked improvement in Madeline L'Engle's writing and this book captures you and takes you away to the world of the Murray's to the point that you lose all track of time in the real world.
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