This book, though it involves the same characters from A Wrinkle In Time, seems like it is somehow separate from the themes of its predecessor. It feels more metaphysical than A Wrinkle In Time, delving into subjects like the nature of telekinesis, different planes of existence and the realms of consciousness. The majority of the book is involved with "kything" a telepathic form of non-verbal communication.
Though these ideas seem really big, something that stood out to me in A Wind In The Door is the language that L'Engle uses to describe the concepts. It seems as though she went out of her way to explain the abstract issues and ideas in the story in a "dumbed down" way, even going so far as re-wording her explanations later in the story, as a way of helpfully reminding her readers about the general details of her lofty cerebral plot devices.
It is this new development in L'Engle's writing that makes me think she decided to act on some of the criticism she received after publishing A Wrinkle In Time, which claimed that there were too many challenging sentences and vocabulary words for a young audience. This book was published a little more than 10 years after the first installment in the series, so she would have had considerable time to re-work her writing style, but I feel like she missed the mark with A Wind In The Door.
The story was still well presented, though because of the removal of any challenging prose and the over-emphasis on kything, it quickly got slow and uninteresting. There were few worthy sub-plots or mind-bending time travels, though there are instances of altered perception that are intuitive. It just somehow felt like more of a forced children's book than A Wrinkle In Time.
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