Book Review: Book of Doom by John Peel

Book #64 of 2024:

Book of Doom by John Peel (Diadem: Worlds of Magic #10)

This is the last of the second wave of author John Peel’s Diadem novels, the four published from 2005 to 2006 under Llewellyn (following the original six volumes put out by Scholastic from 1997 to 1998). It also functions as the conclusion to a two-part story begun in the previous title, concerning the dystopian computer Overmind running Pixel’s homeworld of Calomir, although it doesn’t do much to wrap up the larger overall saga. (The writer would later self-publish two final entries in 2012, presumably to fill that role. Those are the only ones I haven’t read before, as my most recent time through this series was back in 2008.)

It’s a thrilling tale with multiple villains to defeat: both the artificial intelligence still in power across the planet and Nantor, the blue boy’s tyrannical past/future self who broke free and took over his body in the preceding cliffhanger. Pixel’s viewpoint chapters here reduce him to a spectator presence in his own mind rather like an Animorphs Controller, still self-aware and in private communication with the intruder who’s displaced him, but outwardly unable to move a muscle. Furthermore, magic throughout the Diadem is now unbalanced again as it was in the early books, and the enemy aims to restore the full Three Who Rule by awakening his comrades in Score and Helaine. Their efforts to resist that fate are complicated by Oracle and Shanara launching the contingency plans they’ve prepared, essentially betraying their friends to death before they can be turned.

The plot moves lightning-quick, and is strengthened by splitting up the four protagonists so thoroughly that we are continually bouncing from one deadly peril to the next. I appreciate too what we get to see of the characters’ internal battles against their darker natures, with the danger not only of literally freeing the old tyrants, but also in reaching such a level of arrogance and callousness in the process that they would threaten the universe all by themselves. Helaine is the one who struggles the most with this, but Score has some good moments as well, especially when Jenna has to talk him down from lashing out in violence against Shanara.

Diadem has come a long way since the speech distortions and silly codes that riddled its earliest installments, but the story isn’t over just yet. The mystery antagonist from Brine is still unknown and unconfronted, and it feels like Oracle might have hidden depths remaining to unveil, along with the fallout of Shanara’s revelation to Score in the final pages of this book and the young man’s heritage back on Ordin. Oh — and for any of my fellow shippers out there, this is the volume where he and Helaine finally admit their feelings for each other and share a first kiss, so that’s another new dynamic that the sequels will hopefully continue to develop and explore. But as an end to this particular stretch of the narrative, it’s a pretty satisfying finale.

[Content for torture, ableism, and incest.]

★★★★☆

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