Editors Reads Verdict
L'Engle's fourth Time Quintet novel is a bold departure that centres the previously background twins and places them in a genuinely strange version of the antediluvian world. The treatment of biblical material is imaginative and morally serious without being preachy.
What We Loved
- Centring Sandy and Dennys — previously the 'ordinary' Murry twins — is a structurally inspired choice
- The pre-flood world is rendered with genuine imaginative effort, neither literal nor dismissive of the source material
- The moral complexity of the nephilim and seraphim avoids simple allegory
Minor Drawbacks
- The pacing is slower than the earlier novels, with the long middle section testing patience
- The romantic elements involving Noah's daughters are the book's weakest strand
Key Takeaways
- → Ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances reveal depths their ordinary lives conceal
- → Good and evil coexist in the same beings — the nephilim's divided nature is not a simplification but a portrait
- → The choices made before catastrophe determine who survives it with their humanity intact
| Author | Madeleine L'Engle |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Laurel Leaf |
| Pages | 310 |
| Published | January 1, 1986 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy |
Many Waters Review
Many Waters, published in 1986, is the most formally unusual of the Time Quintet novels. The time travel is accidental — Sandy and Dennys Murry, the family’s “ordinary” twins who have consistently appeared as background figures in the previous three books, accidentally type a set of coordinates into their father’s computer and are transported to the antediluvian world, the time just before Noah’s flood. L’Engle’s choice to centre the most consistently minor characters in the series is its most inspired structural decision.
Sandy and Dennys arrive in a world unlike any they have imagined: a desert landscape inhabited by small humans, giant mammoths, and miniature unicorns, where nephilim — the fallen sons of God — walk alongside seraphim in a community on the edge of the catastrophe the flood will bring. They are taken in by Noah’s family and gradually drawn into the dynamics of a world that L’Engle has constructed with careful attention to the moral complexity the source text only implies.
The nephilim and seraphim are not simply good and evil beings in opposition. L’Engle imagines them as creatures of mixed nature — the nephilim capable of genuine beauty and genuine cruelty, the seraphim more aligned with goodness but not without their own limitations. This moral complexity extends to Noah’s family, who are neither saints nor villains but people attempting to live decently in a world that is about to end. Sandy and Dennys, stripped of their ordinary context, discover qualities in themselves they had no occasion to notice.
The novel is the longest in the series and the most quietly paced. The choice of the pre-flood world means the stakes are always known — the catastrophe is coming, and its shape is fixed — which shifts attention from plot to character in ways that the more adventure-driven earlier books could avoid. This is, arguably, L’Engle’s point: the moral life is lived in the time before catastrophe, not in the survival of it.
Our rating: 4.0/5
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Many Waters" about?
Sandy and Dennys Murry — the 'normal' twins — accidentally travel back to biblical times, to the era just before Noah's flood, where they encounter nephilim, seraphim, and Noah's family in a story about choice, mortality, and the nature of good and evil.
What are the key takeaways from "Many Waters"?
Ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances reveal depths their ordinary lives conceal Good and evil coexist in the same beings — the nephilim's divided nature is not a simplification but a portrait The choices made before catastrophe determine who survives it with their humanity intact
Is "Many Waters" worth reading?
L'Engle's fourth Time Quintet novel is a bold departure that centres the previously background twins and places them in a genuinely strange version of the antediluvian world. The treatment of biblical material is imaginative and morally serious without being preachy.
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