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A review by theanitaalvarez
Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
3.0
I’m still not sure about the point of this book. I get it, the Murry twins travel back in time (because they did what they were not supposed to do and touched a machine in their parent’s lab) to Biblical times before the flood.
It was highly entertaining, I won’t lie, but the point I’m trying to get to here is that I don’t know why they needed to travel back. To learn about love? To show that history can’t be changed? To meet a different stage of human evolution?
There are too many questions, and so few answers to them. It’s almost frustrating. Especially because this book stands alone among the others in the Time Quartet and the events here, unlike in the other books, are not related to what’s going to happen in the series. Actually, the third book, A Swiftly Tilting Planet actually is set after this one, but the events are never even brought up.
So, Sandy and Dennis travel back in time, as I said before, to the land before the flood. And, of course, they meet Noah and his family. Especially his younger daughter, Yalith, who is strikingly pretty and attracts both boys from the very beginning.
While trying to understand what happened and how to go back, the twins confront a series of perilous adventures, including the hostility between Seraphim and Nephilim, two powerful races of angels who appear to be fighting over the control of the human race. Well, that’s more for the Nephilim, as the Seraphim are more inclined to help humans.
There’s a very original element in this book in the portrayal of pre-flood humans. To begin with, they are a lot shorter than modern humans. And they appear to have longer life-spans and maturation process. So, they reach adulthood at one hundred years old. That’s, apparently, how Methuselah lived so much (and it seems it wasn’t such a big deal back then). And there are also a few mystical creatures that do not exist right now, like manticores, which attack people when they’re hungry. Mammoths are also very much included in the story, as people in the oasis use them to find water and they are about the size of a dog (I imagine them to be very cute). And there’s unicorns! Cool, quantum-leapers, unicorns! How awesome is that? And they only approach virgins, so the twins can totally ride them (they’re about sixteen here).
So, as the novel goes on, the twins learn about love and about history. Or more, they learn about their own role in history. One of the parts I enjoyed a lot was when they commented how chauvinistic the flood story is in the Bible, as only Noah’s sons are named, and not their wives. And Yalith and Mahlah, Noah’s daughters, are not even mentioned at all.
This actually becomes a real plot point because the twins don’t know whether the girls aren’t mentioned because of the chauvinist vision the Scripture gives, or because they aren’t in the Arc at all. And they’re not mentioned in there either, so that may means that they die there in the flood, or that they return home?
A bonus point for the funny sexual stuff you get in there. I remember a line saying that Japheth (one of Noah’s sons) and Oholibamah (his wife, half Nephilim), “become one” (or something along those lines) and “it was good”. And there’s the other bit when Tiglah, a girl who comes from an evil family and that’s involved (probably, in a sexual way) with one of the Nephilim, tries to seduce Dennys. And he says that having sex with her “is not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn”. Which works as a brilliant euphemism for virginity, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I enjoyed the book and getting to know the twins more deeply. They are cool kids and they don’t get much screen time in the previous installments.
It was highly entertaining, I won’t lie, but the point I’m trying to get to here is that I don’t know why they needed to travel back. To learn about love? To show that history can’t be changed? To meet a different stage of human evolution?
There are too many questions, and so few answers to them. It’s almost frustrating. Especially because this book stands alone among the others in the Time Quartet and the events here, unlike in the other books, are not related to what’s going to happen in the series. Actually, the third book, A Swiftly Tilting Planet actually is set after this one, but the events are never even brought up.
So, Sandy and Dennis travel back in time, as I said before, to the land before the flood. And, of course, they meet Noah and his family. Especially his younger daughter, Yalith, who is strikingly pretty and attracts both boys from the very beginning.
While trying to understand what happened and how to go back, the twins confront a series of perilous adventures, including the hostility between Seraphim and Nephilim, two powerful races of angels who appear to be fighting over the control of the human race. Well, that’s more for the Nephilim, as the Seraphim are more inclined to help humans.
There’s a very original element in this book in the portrayal of pre-flood humans. To begin with, they are a lot shorter than modern humans. And they appear to have longer life-spans and maturation process. So, they reach adulthood at one hundred years old. That’s, apparently, how Methuselah lived so much (and it seems it wasn’t such a big deal back then). And there are also a few mystical creatures that do not exist right now, like manticores, which attack people when they’re hungry. Mammoths are also very much included in the story, as people in the oasis use them to find water and they are about the size of a dog (I imagine them to be very cute). And there’s unicorns! Cool, quantum-leapers, unicorns! How awesome is that? And they only approach virgins, so the twins can totally ride them (they’re about sixteen here).
So, as the novel goes on, the twins learn about love and about history. Or more, they learn about their own role in history. One of the parts I enjoyed a lot was when they commented how chauvinistic the flood story is in the Bible, as only Noah’s sons are named, and not their wives. And Yalith and Mahlah, Noah’s daughters, are not even mentioned at all.
This actually becomes a real plot point because the twins don’t know whether the girls aren’t mentioned because of the chauvinist vision the Scripture gives, or because they aren’t in the Arc at all. And they’re not mentioned in there either, so that may means that they die there in the flood, or that they return home?
A bonus point for the funny sexual stuff you get in there. I remember a line saying that Japheth (one of Noah’s sons) and Oholibamah (his wife, half Nephilim), “become one” (or something along those lines) and “it was good”. And there’s the other bit when Tiglah, a girl who comes from an evil family and that’s involved (probably, in a sexual way) with one of the Nephilim, tries to seduce Dennys. And he says that having sex with her “is not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn”. Which works as a brilliant euphemism for virginity, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I enjoyed the book and getting to know the twins more deeply. They are cool kids and they don’t get much screen time in the previous installments.