A review by zenithharpink
An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle
2.0
1.5 stars. This book was easily the worst book I've read for the year, probably in the last several years. There wasn't any redeemable quality that I could ascertain, and the only reason I don't give it one star is I that I save 1 stars for books I don't feel should have ben published. This book was at least edited and without mass typos and grammatical errors, but the editor clearly didn't bother with story coherence.
This book was boring, dull and unexciting-individually, it achieved all three of these rather similar merits in unique ways. The characters were superficial, bland, and without dimension or drive. The first 200 pages of this book could have been summarized, "Polly had a meal with her grandparents, and they didn't believe her when she told them about her day." All the more ludicrous to readers who are familiar with the first 4 books of this baffling series.
The 'science' conversations were both pedantic and asinine-a rare feat that I can't recall happening even once in previous books I read. The 'story' was an event that happened to the characters, they did absolutely nothing to own their destiny, change it, or otherwise engage with what was happening. Even in their attempts to understand what was happening, their efforts were lackluster and without any real dedication-this coming from a coterie of highly intelligent, right-brained "scientists"...and one bishop.
This book fell appallingly short on every metric I use to gauge a book's merits and serves the closest I've come to DNF'ing a book since I encountered the swill that was Twilight. Even my inner compromise of scanning that last 160 pages of this book was painful to my very core-I barely made it, truly.
I don't recommend this book, if the above wasn't clear. It was awful, and far worse than any of the other books of this series, none of which I enjoyed. I intend to never read this book or anything by the author ever in my life, so I suppose that is the one good thing I can say about this book. It is the last in a series, and I am now free to never read it or any of its siblings again.
This book was boring, dull and unexciting-individually, it achieved all three of these rather similar merits in unique ways. The characters were superficial, bland, and without dimension or drive. The first 200 pages of this book could have been summarized, "Polly had a meal with her grandparents, and they didn't believe her when she told them about her day." All the more ludicrous to readers who are familiar with the first 4 books of this baffling series.
The 'science' conversations were both pedantic and asinine-a rare feat that I can't recall happening even once in previous books I read. The 'story' was an event that happened to the characters, they did absolutely nothing to own their destiny, change it, or otherwise engage with what was happening. Even in their attempts to understand what was happening, their efforts were lackluster and without any real dedication-this coming from a coterie of highly intelligent, right-brained "scientists"...and one bishop.
This book fell appallingly short on every metric I use to gauge a book's merits and serves the closest I've come to DNF'ing a book since I encountered the swill that was Twilight. Even my inner compromise of scanning that last 160 pages of this book was painful to my very core-I barely made it, truly.
I don't recommend this book, if the above wasn't clear. It was awful, and far worse than any of the other books of this series, none of which I enjoyed. I intend to never read this book or anything by the author ever in my life, so I suppose that is the one good thing I can say about this book. It is the last in a series, and I am now free to never read it or any of its siblings again.