2.5 Stars

The Murray twins step into the spotlight for the very first time in this book. Intriguingly, it seems to be set somewhere between the second and third books of the series. Meg isn't married yet, and Sandy and Dennys are supposed to be in high school during this installment. After accidentally disrupting an experiment, the boys find themselves hurled back to a version of the days before the global flood. In a strange oasis, they encounter Noah and his family, just before the construction of the famous ark, as well as some of the more corrupt and deeply unpleasant inhabitants of the ancient world.

Among the first four books I've read in this series, this one ranks last on my list of favorites. Similar to "A Swiftly Tilting Planet", this story involves time travel and either altering or maintaining the balance of the past. However, unlike the third book, our young heroes actually end up living in and having to cope with this historical time period where they've seemingly become trapped. It's not so much the premise that didn't sit well with this reader as it was the slow pacing combined with the author's particular high-fantasy interpretation of the biblically referenced time period. While the third book dealt with a completely fabricated timeline and family history, in this one, the author is directly drawing from a known source and twisting elements to suit her own purpose.

For some reason, L’Engle chose to depict ancient humanity as loincloth-wearing, desert-dwelling people who were extremely small in stature. By the end, I gathered that this was meant to imply that cross-breeding with fallen angels led to the more modern increase in height. (However, this doesn't explain the miniaturized size or nature of the water-detecting desert mammoths, which were described as being the size of dogs. There are also manticores, griffons, and "Virtual Unicorns" that only exist when you choose to believe in them... for reasons. >.>) Humanity's extremely long lifespan was also suggested as the cause for not reaching technical adulthood until around the centennial mark. As a result, Noah's 100-year-old daughter Yalith, who becomes the love interest for both brothers, is portrayed as a painfully naive teenage-minded girl. Talk about a serious case of arrested development!

To me, the twins didn't have distinct enough personalities. While they do prove to be more intelligent than they previously let on, they are still the most "normal" (i.e. vanilla dull) of all the Murray family. I found myself reading more to learn the plot rather than out of concern for what might happen to either of them.
Sandy and Denny's hazy knowledge of the Old Testament means they eventually do figure out the significance of the Noah they've encountered. But their lack of study and/or interest means they are incredibly slow to pick up on the fallen angels and Nephilim. (Apparently, in L’Engle’s highly mythological vision of the quickly summarized record, humans don't understand what the "winged giants" they've been breeding with actually are.)

Content Note: Contextual nudity (and its effect on the modern boys) is addressed with tact and cultural frankness. But this is the first book in the series to repeatedly reference awakening sexuality, which may come as a surprise to some readers. Lust and seduction are repeatedly depicted as they are used against the twins in an attempt to obtain information. However, compared to some of the more recent trends in Middle Grade and YA, the situations are relatively tame in terms of graphicness and end result.

Yes, there will be spoilers, but, seriously, it doesn't matter, because you don't want to read this book.

All right. So this book focuses on Sandy and Dennys, who have been rather like side characters in the other books. They are Meg and Charles Wallace's "normal" brothers, twins. It takes place before "A Swiftly Tilting Planet", when the twins are sports stars in high school. I got the impression that they are probably juniors and around 17 years old. Basically, the boys walk into their mother's lab, and when they walk out, instead of going back to the kitchen of the house, they end up in the days of Noah. Yes, that Noah, the one who built the big boat. Hence the title of the book.

There's never a definite conclusion about how they were transported back in time. It might or might not have been related to an experiment in the lab, though the type of experiment is never explained. Or it could have had something to do with them fiddling with their dad's strange computer. Or maybe it was just God.

They end up in the desert. Of course, they're wearing winter clothing, which they quickly discard until they're nearly naked. Because that's always a smart thing to do in the desert. The result is that about 1/3 of the book is about them being nursed back to health by Noah's family, who mistake the twins for giants because no one in Noah's day was even close to being 5' tall. A lot of this part of the book also has the repeated conversation with every single character they meet: "We're not giants." And it's not that I don't think they wouldn't have had to have that conversation, but does L'Engle really need to repeat it 10 or so times?

This book also follows the pattern of all the books in the series: The characters don't really do much. Sandy and Dennys talk a lot about how they'll get home. Or rather, they ask that question a lot. Every few pages it seems. "How will we get home?" "I don't know." "What should we do?" "Let's go garden." Seriously, that's their solution every time the question comes up, to work in Noah's father's garden. Basically, they end up being observers of the action around them, and that's about it. And what that amounts to is that the rising action in this book is about as exciting as a road in West Texas with a speed bump on it when Sandy gets kidnapped.

Aside from the lack of any real story or character development, the book is full of all kinds of ridiculousness:

1. There are mammoths. Yes, in the desert. But these aren't the big, hairy elephants you're thinking of. No, these are tiny mammoths, terrier-sized. In fact, they're basically small dogs that look like mammoths. They can scent things and follow trails like a bloodhound, and they're also used as dowsing rods to find water. Which kind of explains why the desert people keep them as pets, I guess, but how did they get so tiny? Well, apparently, they evolved to be that way? The explanation is something like they got smaller and smaller over a long time.

2. However, the Earth in this book is a brand new Earth, a very young planet still going through its growing pains, so the whole thing with the mammoths doesn't really make sense. L'Engle seems to want to have the Earth be both billions of years old and only 5000 (or so) years old, like in the strict Creationist viewpoint.

3. There are manticores and griffons. Or a manticore and a griffon. It's never clear if there's more than one of each. The manticore is "bad" and just shows up like a cartoon character to shout "hungry" and try to eat the little doggy-mammoths and has to be shooed away. The griffon shows up to chase "bad" girls away from Sandy and Dennys.

4. L'Engle seems to have a thing for unicorns, because there are more unicorns in this book. Virtual unicorns, as the twins call them. They don't always exist, only when you decide you believe in them, and of course, they can only be approached by virgins. The annoying thing about the unicorns is that even after the boys have experiences with them, they go on and on about how they can't believe in them because they don't exist, so they can only believe in the unicorns when they're actually standing right in front of them. I have to assume they also stopped believing in their family when their family wasn't right in front of them.

-- The problem with all this is that L'Engle, as far as I can tell, wants us to accept this book as being set in reality, our reality, and yet, she undermines reality by introducing all this mythological stuff into what we're supposed to believe is the actual pre-flood setting. It's more suspension of disbelief than I could handle, and I haven't even gotten to the Angels.

5. Oh, yes, the Angels. The pseudo conflict in the book is between the seraphim (the good Angels) and the nephilim (the bad Angels). In fact, the whole "conflict" revolves around a girl, Yalith, who everyone is in love with, so it becomes a matter of who she will choose: one of the twins (or both) or Eblis, the nephilim. It's an empty conflict through which L'Engle seems to deliver her message of "bad things don't happen to good people" (a message that makes me wonder what reality L'Engle lived in, because it's the same kind of message all of her books have: Love will always win and, ultimately, nothing bad happens to people who believe in love).

Speaking of Yalith and male/female relationships in general in this book: This may have been the hardest part of the book for me to deal with. Yalith is the youngest child of Noah; she's almost 100 years old (because people in Noah's time lived much longer (Noah is 700ish)), but she's basically a teenager. Because, you know, living longer means slower growth? Which makes me wonder how long a baby would stay a baby in this time. 20 years? Because, man, if I was a mom, I'd be really angry. Having to take care of an infant for 20 years... I can't even imagine it, especially since pregnancy still only lasts nine months (because there was a birth during the book). You could end up with a lot of babies. Actually, what I think she wants us to believe is that everyone ages normally until they hit puberty, when for some reason they stop developing. Still, that means around 90 years as a teenager! That would be the worst!

Oh, back to the twins and male/female relationships:

So Sandy meets Yalith; Yalith is basically naked because the people in Noah's time only wear loincloths. In the desert. Because we have examples of people today who live in the desert and only wear loincloths? At any rate, Yalith is almost naked, and Sandy is a teenage boy confronted with a naked girl, and his response is to get a "funny feeling." Um, what? A funny feeling? What does that even mean? And that's how all the interactions between the twins and girls go: They get funny feelings. I'm sorry; these boys are supposed to be 16 or 17 years old, and L'Engle is treating them as if they're, at best, 10. It's ridiculous.

The twins do end up back at home after spending at least a year in the desert with Noah. One of the Angels removes the boys' tans and, I assume, the year or more they had aged, although that's not actually mentioned. So they end up back at home right at the point they left, and nothing has changed. There was no character growth for the twins, and nothing of consequence was affected in the past. The flood still happens and all that. It's a book where the goal is to return to the status quo but without even the benefit of the characters learning anything from the journey. In fact, the boys pick up talking about getting their driver's licenses as if nothing had even happened.

Everyone remembers reading _A Wrinkle in Time_, right?

However, I couldn't recall anything about _Many Waters_. So, during one summer, I borrowed it from a friend and read it on the bus to and from school.

This book truly took me by surprise. While _A Wrinkle in Time_ is filled with fantasy, _Many Waters_, on the other hand... well, I guess it's still fantasy. After all, the twin boys travel through time. But what's astonishing is that it's centered around events that are supposed to have actually occurred.

The Murry twin boys, Sandy and Dennys, journey back to the biblical times just before The Flood. That's what caught me off guard. I hadn't remembered or anticipated the book to be about biblical events. Nevertheless, I absolutely loved the book! It's enjoyable and has numerous "Ohhhh..." and "A-ha" moments that keep you engaged throughout.

It's a unique blend of fantasy and real (or at least supposed) history that makes for a captivating read.

This book just barely missed being my absolute favorite in the series, coming in right behind "A Swiftly Tilting Planet."

It tells a story that is less focused on love and justice and more about the difficult choices that both people and deities have to make in a flawed world.

It is an out-and-out retelling of the Biblical Deluge, but from the perspective of two modern teenagers. What makes it unique is that it doesn't apologize for all the fantastical elements that the Bible referred to in antediluvian times. There are angels having affairs with village girls, men who live for centuries, and strange voices in the forest.

Surprisingly, this was one of the most original fantasy lands that a novel had taken me to up until that point. The author's vivid imagination and ability to bring this ancient story to life in a new and exciting way is truly remarkable.

It makes you think about the choices we make in our own lives and how they can have far-reaching consequences. Overall, it's a must-read for any fan of fantasy or those interested in exploring the themes of morality and decision-making.

This is the other contender for my favorite Madeleine L'Engle book.

I have a particular affection for this book due to its unique take on the biblical story of Noah and the flood. I've heard this story numerous times throughout my childhood in Sunday School, to the point where it seemed to have lost some of its original allure.

L'Engle, however, manages to breathe new life into it by skillfully blending biblical concepts and narratives with her own imaginative interpretations of that era. She offers her own takes on the seraphim and nephilim, as well as introducing mythical creatures like manticores. Additionally, she provides an interesting explanation for the conspicuous absence of Noah's daughters from both the ark and the Bible.

It makes for a truly engaging read, and it's always a delight to see a familiar story presented in a fresh and meaningful way. It allows us to view the story from a different perspective and gain new insights and understandings.

Overall, this book is a testament to L'Engle's creativity and her ability to reimagine and recontextualize well-known tales.

The 4th installment of the time quintet is an interesting one. This time around, the story centers on the twins, Sandy and Denny.

The writing of the themes appears to be more refined for the targeted demographic as it delves into matters such as coming of age and lustful temptations.

(Spoilers follow)

What I appreciate about this book is that it presents the tale from a female perspective. It draws inspiration from the Bible's Noah's ark story. The Bible is written with a patriarchal view, not even bothering to mention the names of Noah's sons' wives.

Consequently, it is comforting to read about what transpired with these women and it helps to fill in the blanks regarding what might have been.

This unique approach adds depth and a fresh perspective to the well-known story, making it an engaging read for those interested in exploring different viewpoints and interpretations.

Overall, the 4th installment of the time quintet offers an intriguing take on a familiar narrative, with its focus on the experiences and perspectives of the female characters.

It makes one think about the often overlooked aspects of stories and encourages a more inclusive and diverse understanding of history and literature.

Whether you are a fan of the time quintet series or simply interested in reading something new and thought-provoking, this book is definitely worth checking out.

Never read childhood favorites as an adult if you don't want them to lose their favorite status. The book in question is about two teenage twin boys, Sandy and Dennys. They accidentally touch their father's science project and end up time traveling to a few months before the Great Flood with Noah and company. This was apparently very interesting when I was 12, but not now.

I found the author to be extremely repetitive. How many times can new characters discover that Sandy and Dennys are twins and be confused about it? It seems to happen over and over again. Also, just how long does it take a real person to get over a bad sunburn? I've had such experiences many times, and it doesn't incapacitate a person for weeks as it does in the book. Moreover, I found the book to be too fantastical for my adult tastes. I had no desire to read about good and bad angels that transformed themselves into good and bad animals. There was very little character development in the book, except to establish who was good and who was bad.

The story was very different from what I remembered it to be. I think it's probably a book best appreciated by pre-teens and teens rather than adults. As an adult, I had a different perspective and set of expectations, and this book simply didn't meet them.

I enjoy L'Engle's books, for the most part. This one was no exception. However, my absolute favorites will always be A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind In The Door. The reason being that they don't suffer from the main problem that this book and A Swiftly Tilting Planet do.

Specifically, in this book and in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the twins in this one and Charles Wallace in the other don't really take any significant actions. They do go to a different time and place, but then what? They simply wait to return home.

This doesn't mean the book was written poorly. It just gives the impression that there wasn't much purpose to Sandy and Den being there. They mainly went about their daily lives as best they could and assisted Noah and Grandfather with basic chores. Even at the end, when the arc was being constructed, they just helped build it. They didn't really have any major obstacles to overcome.

Sure, the nephil were present and sort of worked against them, but whenever either of the twins was in danger, it didn't seem like there was any real doubt that they would be rescued or able to extricate themselves. It also didn't feel like the nephil would have actually harmed them.

Overall, it was a well-written story that does add some depth to Sandy and Den. It's also an interesting way to approach the story of Noah and the flood.

It always amuses me when people inaccurately use the term "coming of age story" when they actually mean "sexual awakening". There is indeed a significant difference. For example, Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 film Spirited Away is a prime example of a true coming of age film. The protagonist, Chihiro, does meet a dragon/boy she may have feelings for, but it's not this aspect that drives her character development. Instead, it's the lessons she learns about hard work, sacrifice, and caring for others that push her to "grow up".

On the other hand, in Many Waters, Sandys and Dennys don't change much throughout the story. They enter and exit the narrative in a similar state, self-sufficient, hardworking, and caring. What does change for them is their awareness of sexual and emotional desire.

Reading Many Waters, I got a very different impression compared to the rest of the Time books. Although its cover has the words "a companion to a Wrinkle in Time", unlike the other books in the series, I felt this one was self-sufficient enough to stand alone. It makes me wonder if Le'Engle, after writing these books decades apart, didn't write this as more of an adult novel, knowing that the original readers of A Wrinkle in Time would have grown up by then. There are several elements in this book that make it a questionable choice for younger readers. For instance, Sandy, tied up in a tent, hears his captor's voice and calls her name. When she thinks he recognizes her by her voice, he actually says to himself, "I recognized you by your scent you slut". Earlier, Dennys tells of his walk through the oasis bazaar and his difficulty in looking at the faces of those who are to be drowned. These are not exactly appropriate for elementary school students.

However, despite being a children's book by a Christian author set in biblical times where the village seductress is called a slut, it's surprisingly not stuffy when it comes to messages about sex and women. Le'Engle makes a bold move by having some of her characters call the Noah story chauvinistic from the start, addressing some of the tensions head-on. And while the story doesn't deviate drastically from the biblical account, she angles it from a feminine perspective. The main narrators are two young adolescent boys, but most of the story revolves around activities typically considered feminine, such as watering animals and plants, gardening, cooking, caring for the elderly, birthing, and marriage. The first place Dennys is taken to that is considered safe and whole is the women's menstruation tent, and less time is spent on the sons compared to the daughters in Noah's tent.

And then there's the sex. It's definitely not your typical bible story. The constant sexual tension of a possible threesome is something that never made it into any of my Baby's First Bible. The message here isn't so much about abstinence as some have suggested, but rather about understanding that who you have sex with the first time matters just as much as who you have sex with when you're settled down. It's about not being careless.

In the end, did I like Many Waters more than A Wrinkle in Time? It's a bit of a yes and no. They're both very different. As a piece of children's literature, I will always love A Wrinkle in Time the best. But as an adult's book, Many Waters is a finely crafted and startling re-imagination of biblical times that belongs right up there with The Red Tent. It's highly recommended.

The evil-twins thing was mostly a joke. They're really just normal twins, unless you have a really original take on Sandy and Dennys Murray that I've never heard of before.

Re-re-reading this (one of my favorite books as a kid) and re-reviewing it. On one hand, not much has changed regarding my opinion of this book. On the other hand, everything has. It's still my favorite of the Time Quintet, and I still consider it a classic of middle-grade fiction. At the same time, I guess from a pretentious literary standpoint, I don't think it's necessarily the best or even second-best of the Quintet. Honestly that award probably goes to the first two books. It's hard to beat the ingenuity of A Wrinkle in Time. And yet I've always had a soft spot for Many Waters, maybe because I've always had a soft spot for Sandy and Dennys, and for "ordinary, dependable" characters in general. I think partially because Charles Wallace and Meg irritated me a little bit, either because of their precociousness or just because it started to feel unfair that they were getting all the adventures. While the twins don't seem to go through as much of a character evolution during their time-quantum journey as I might have liked, at least they get to have a journey, period.

In hindsight, a lot of details make it sort of clear that Many Waters is one of the weaker books of the series. Unlike the first two books, the reader never receives even a semblance of an explanation as to how Sandy and Dennys end up where they are, other than a vague mention of "quantum leaps." It's also telling that about half of the narrative takes place from the perspective of characters that aren't Sandy or Dennys--the plot was apparently flagging, and/or the twins were just too boring to carry it all on their own. But these pale in comparison to the flaw I think most people would find here--it's basically Bible fanfiction.

But...I kind of love it? Like I was into it as a child and I'm still sort of into it now. Sure, anything even remotely scientific or believable flies straight out the window, and the whole plot becomes dependent on the trajectory of an ages-old Biblical tale, but L'Engle...managed to make it work? I mean, the story of Noah and the Flood-slash-the-coming-of-age/sexual-awakening of two "ordinary" teenagers. In many ways, it's much ballsier than the other four books. Like this is a whole-ass Old Testament story, but one that's at least partially considered science fiction, where the angels talk about quantum physics. And of course, L'Engle doesn't skimp on comments about the inherent misogyny of the people who wrote the Bible and its real-world effects.

Which isn't to say that this book is perfect or that it has aged with total grace. Sandy and Dennys are kind of the same character except that one knows a lot about medicine and the other one knows less. Some of the characters are described as having an "Oriental strangeness." It challenges the Bible, but not as much as it could, partially because of a weird random element about the dangers of changing the sequence of events. Fear of this potential butterfly effect basically chains the characters to the original story, keeping it from branching off in any notable way. Reading this as an adult I find myself wishing that Yalith and the twins put up more of a fight to get Yalith on the ark. The end solution to the Bible's disregard for unmarried women is heartwarming but still feels a little lacking.

The other people of the oasis are as simplistically evil as in the Biblical flood story, with no ambiguity or even a pause to wonder whether they deserve to be wiped out. This mostly surprises me because the book seems intended for a Young Adult audience, probably the readers that have grown up since the more Middle-Grade-level three first books were written. One of the main characters definitely has a sexual-awakening type plot with a girl of the oasis named Tiglah, which was going well until the twins start variously referring to her as "an easy lay", "a delicious dish", and, more to the point, a "slut." When eleven-year-old me first read this, I was thrilled ("oooh, you're allowed to write that?") Now all I can think is, Dude. You're 15. Get over yourself.

My favorite element of the novel continues to be the nephilim. As quintessentially, hand-rubbing-and-cackling-ly evil as they are, I still think they're the most perfect example of badassery here. The seraphim are fine. Angels whose names all start with "A" that transform into "good", "noble" animals, like lions, swans, and scarab beetles (actually I really liked the beetle). But the nephilim get to shapeshift into cool-ass cockroaches, dragons, vultures, mosquitos, red ants, they get to screw around with the "children of men", and the seraphim basically just exist as their necessary opposition. I would have liked to find out what exactly happened to the nephilim when the inevitable floods come, whether they end up meeting an unexpected death with everyone else, or if they leave their human brides to the wayside with everyone else and feast on the chaos and destruction. ("I smell that we will soon have much to eat.")

The only thing that REALLY bothers me, though? That this is the fourth book but takes place before the events of the third. Obviously it was written after, and maybe the coming-of-age tale wouldn't have made as much sense if the twins weren't teenagers anymore. The thing is, when you read A Swiftly Tilting Planet after reading Many Waters, it's hard to imagine that Sandy and Dennys are the same twins who spent a year in the Bible.

So Sandy and Dennys are identical twin boys and they are the middle children of Madeleine L'Engle's Murry family in her Time Quintet series. They come between older sister Meg and younger brother Charles Wallace. In A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Sandy and Dennys mainly function as family place holders and don't play major textual roles. This can be annoying and frustrating. However, in Many Waters, the twins finally take center stage. They are magically transported to Biblical times just before the Great Flood.

The story has a solid grounding in Genesis and is simple on the surface but intricate if you read between the lines. It features complex characters and relationships. The ancient world of Many Waters is described vividly, with deserts, oases, unicorns, mammoths, griffons and unique human beings. Although it seems different from today, the evils and problems that led to the Great Flood still exist.

The twins become compassionate participants in pre-flood events, helping with the construction of the Ark and reconciling Noah and Lamech. They are aware that they can't change the course of the story. They have major issues with Yalith's potential fate but have faith that she won't come to harm. In the end, they realize that the Great Flood experiment failed as the negative aspects of human nature remain the same.

The Old Testament story takes place before The Tower of Babel, so the language is spare and direct. The descriptions and the singing stars add a mythic timelessness. Many Waters is a wonderful family tale, both sweet and painful. It's my favorite of the Time Quintet and I give it five stars, although it could use a glossary to explain the Biblical allusions and names.

This was such an outstanding book!

I was truly captivated by the fact that the entire book is essentially composed of just three sentences from Scripture.

The concept that Noah's sons had sisters for whom there was no space on the Ark is truly fascinating!

It makes one wonder about the many details and stories that are not explicitly told in the Bible.

L'Engle has once again crafted a remarkable tale that combines imagination and religious inspiration.

Her ability to take a simple idea and expand it into a thought-provoking and engaging story is truly remarkable.

This is yet another fantastic addition to her body of work.

Readers will surely be enthralled by this unique and captivating book.

It is a must-read for anyone who enjoys thought-provoking literature and is interested in exploring the intersection of faith and imagination.

L'Engle's talent shines through in every page of this wonderful book.