Review: Great new perspective on this ongoing series
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 17, 2012
When I first heard this book was going to be centered around Timon, Tor's little brother, I was bummed by the news.  As readers, we were limited in our view of Timon by his brother's observations of him, so I expected a younger, even more fragile version of Torrence Baker.  Instead, the author has treated us to an even more mature, self-aware protagonist who may be small in stature but who is big in many other ways.Timon has grown up in Tor's shadow, and he is very aware of the comparisons constantly being made by others, but here we see that Timon is his own man.  He might only be twelve but his keen intellect and his willingness to act, and act decisively, is worlds away from the the meandering adventures of Tor, or at least the Tor we knew before his "Slave" programming was pulled.  Here we see Timon pull together clues and make deductions in minutes that have eluded Tor for years, and some of these revelations came as quite a shock for me.  Evidently, the world of the Young Ancients is an even darker place than Tor was able to comprehend and we can see the evidence here in The Dark Half of the Sun.As noted elsewhere, this is a book about a pre-teen boy but the subject matter is not written for young readers, with some really cringe-worthy passages that would not be suitable for the younger crowd.  All in all, Timon must endure his own hardships and tests and by the end of the book, Timon emerges as a real and engaging character independent of the shadow cast by his older, more famous sibling.  This is some of P.S. Power's best writing and propels this series to the next level, and I hope to read more of Timon's continuing adventures as soon as possible.