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The other thing that really impressed me about the book was the way the time travel was handled – this is a bugbear for me as I've read some dreadfully convoluted stories in the past concerning the subject. Denning sets things up well, never goes into too much detail on how everything works, and trust in his ability to keep the action flowing so well that the fine points aren't particularly important. Speaking of details, while the historical sequences are fairly short and they're set in times which I'm not particularly familiar with, they certainly all seem authentic.
I generally really like 'shades of grey' characterisation in fantasy, and tend to find completely good or evil characters rather boring. However, I'll make an exception here – while there are several characters who are definitely ambiguous, and whose motivations will keep you guessing right until the end, Tom and Edward stand out as really likable likeable 'pure' heroes, particularly with a couple of speeches they make, while Redfeld is a splendidly evil antagonist.
In many ways, the story – young boy finds out he had mysterious powers he didn't know about and is plunged into a quest which has been going on for years – is reminiscent of the Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, still probably my favourite children's fantasy sequence twenty years after I originally read it. I'm not saying that I'll return to this one again as often as I've done that series – but I'll definitely reread it at least once in the future, and I'll recommend it to readers around Tom's age, many of whom I confidently expect to absolutely love it. I'm not sure whether older teens will like it quite so much, given the huge amount of great fantasy out there today and the lack of much character development, but I'd encourage them to at least try it.