No one can claim that "Dustland," the second book in Virginia Hamilton's trilogy, can stand alone. Nothing is meant to be resolved, and I confess that it's hard to wait for the last and decisive volume. It's not simply that I'm impatient at the interruption of narrative; I want to know what Virginia Hamilton thinks. Is there a future for mankind? That's the kind of question she's leading up to and that's what I want to know. And I won't know until the last sparks have fallen.

In the first book, "Justice and Her Brothers," she introduces her characters: Justice, the 11-year-old heroine, her identicaltwin brothers, Tom and Levi, mirror images of good and evil, and Dorian, their strange friend. Although the group lives in today's real world, there is a growing extrasensory power at work that finally binds them together and enables them to enter the future...