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A review by trevert
The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L'Engle
3.0
Kind of an odd duck. Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all, and I enjoyed the original two sequels as well. But while this book concerns the further adventures of Meg & Calvin, they're grown and parents of a brood here, working as scientists on a secret research. Our young hero is sent to be Calvin's lab assistant and quickly finds himself embroiled in a tangled web of intrigue as mysterious characters warn him the O'Keefes are dangerous, and he needs to be a double agent.
It's not at all a sci fi/fantasy book like the Wrinkle series, it's more like the author was doing a bit of YA spy thriller using existing characters. And generally speaking, it works, but there's one big problem with it that saps a lot of the supposed tension - While it's told as if our hero doesn't know who to trust and which side are the good guys, if you've read the Wrinkle books you KNOW who the good guys are and there's not even any question, so a great deal of book time is wasted on this "Who's good? Who's bad?" debating and the result is, sadly, boredom. A lot of time I was just waiting for something to happen. The writing is her usual high quality and it has some nice debates on good and evil and the sacrifices required to try to be good, but overall the actual plot just didn't hold my interest.
It's not at all a sci fi/fantasy book like the Wrinkle series, it's more like the author was doing a bit of YA spy thriller using existing characters. And generally speaking, it works, but there's one big problem with it that saps a lot of the supposed tension - While it's told as if our hero doesn't know who to trust and which side are the good guys, if you've read the Wrinkle books you KNOW who the good guys are and there's not even any question, so a great deal of book time is wasted on this "Who's good? Who's bad?" debating and the result is, sadly, boredom. A lot of time I was just waiting for something to happen. The writing is her usual high quality and it has some nice debates on good and evil and the sacrifices required to try to be good, but overall the actual plot just didn't hold my interest.