Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not the best.
Review: The narrative is a bit confused, and the jump in ages between this book and the previous ones in the series--one wants to know what happened in between!--is a problem, but it is still worth reading.
To answer the reader who objected to Meg's putting her scientific career 'on hold' to be a wife and mother, L'Engle herself said that she did this because (a) there were a lot of children's and young adult books coming out at the time which had strong female characters choosing a career, but that (b) feminism was supposed to be about CHOICE, and she wanted to portray a strong female who CHOSE wifehood/motherhood as her vocation, as opposed to on the one hand who chose a professional career or on the other hand fell into the wife/mother role by default.
Rating: 
Summary: It's a classic race between goodness and evil
Review: When I was growing up in the 80s, I was always afraid of nuclear war. Watching movies on TV didn't help the fear either ... and this book, L'Engle taps into that fear in all of us. Meg Murry O'Keefe and her family had just sat down to a Thanksgiving dinner when her father gets a phone call from the president of the United States telling him that they are on the brink of nuclear war. Being pregnant, Meg couldn't go on this journey ~~ but her baby brother Charles Wallace and the unicorn, Glaudior went on an adventure racing back in time to find out what had happened to Mad Dog's ancestors ... and perhaps stop the castrophe from happening. It's a wonderful trip down history ~~ one that is just filled with historical notes and tidbits ... and visiting the planet where Glaudior is from ~~ is just pure romantic. This is a book that one couldn't just put down and forget. I highly recommend this book to everyone again ~~ one can never be too tired to sing L'Engle's praises when reading her books. She is an author that every one should read. She writes with such a flair and a talent that it makes you wish you could write like she does ... then again, we wouldn't have L'Engle to entertain us, would we? 1-23-02
Rating:
Summary: Near the top of her game.
Review: When Madeline L'Engle is on, her stories are both strange and familiar. Strange, because the plot involves -- in this case -- unicorns that ride through time and space, devils, psychic mixing of personalities, and the possible end of the world. Familiar, because the story is rooted in family, not the Simpsons or Archie Bunkers, but a loving home of scientists, artists, a tail-thumping black dog, (named Ananda -- not for the disfunctional Hindu sect of the same name) and a home that has its own, understated personality. If you read her autobiographies -- she broke the rule by writing more than one -- it turns out that a lot of this comes out of her own rich life of love and relationships. (Her husband, like one of the characters here, ran a country store.)
I liked this book. I liked the way the hero touches down in different epochs at the same place, the "star-gazing rock" and the surrounding valley and forest. We visit the place during the Ice Ages, early tribal periods, the colonial era, and earlier modern eras, following the story of a mixed and dangerously balanced family through time. As it happens, the fortunes of that family will effect the future, or lack thereof, of planet earth, and it all depends (as in Ray Bradbury's story of the butterfly) on choices made in the distant past, that perhaps can be unmade.
Admittedly, the book has a few weaknesses. I think L'Engle exagerates how common witch hunting was in the American colonies, and mistakes how it was conducted. (As far as I know, professional witch hunters were rare; most of it came from hysterical teenage girls.) Also, making the villain with doomsday nukes a South American dictator seems a little odd -- where did any South American country come up with such a massive stockpile, presumably with all the missiles? And the "good" family line versus the "bad" line is of course a very problematic theme.
But L'Engle can be forgiven for letting her muse get out of control occasionally. Her descriptions of nature can be beautiful ("as each flaming sun turned on its axis, a singing came from the friction in the way a finger moved around the rim of a crystal goblet . . . and the song varies in pitch and tone from glass to glass"), her characters are likeable (it can't be easy to make a unicorn come to life), the story engages interesting ideas, and most of all, there is a purity or goodness here that makes me feel at home.
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