A review by rebeccatc
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle

3.0

So I needed a book to read for the 2015 Reading Challenge that was published the year I was born. I saw A Wind in the Door on a list for 1974 and thought it would make a nice quick read to fill that category, since I had already read most of the other books that appealed to me (such as Stephen King's Carrie, John Jakes' The Bastard, Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels). Once I started reading it, I realized it was actually published in 1973. Doh! Anyway, I had read A Wrinkle in Time a few years ago for my book club and I will say the same thing about this book I said about that one: I would have loved it if I had read it when I was 12. Now, I will just say this: It is filled from beginning to end with the kind of trippy nonsense that appeals mainly to adolescents and, I assume, to people who are indulging in 1970's era recreational drugs. It also relies on the tired contrivance of Mysterious Characters In the Know, who refuse to share any real information with the Confused Protagonist Not in the Know, because there is never enough TIME and they have to fight off the end of the world NOW without any real instruction, because the Protagonist Not in the Know is somehow destined to do this! This of course excuses the author from actually explaining anything either, which fits in well with the denouement where some poetry is recited and then the Confused Protagonist Not in the Know wakes up from a faint to discover that everything is more or less okay, and that other characters didn't faint and can fill her in on what happened, sort of. More fantasy than science fiction.