Book Review: Book of Earth by John Peel

Book #33 of 2024:

Book of Earth by John Peel (Diadem #5)

This is by far the best of the original six Diadem novels published by Scholastic from 1997 to 1998 (and perhaps of the entire series, which resumed many years later under Llewellyn). It picks up on the cliffhanger ending of the volume before, with Score falling prey to a magical attack via an amulet that he left back on Earth, injecting real stakes and a ticking-clock element into the narrative. Our three teen heroes now have to visit his homeland of New York City to find the item and cure him, and that’s a development that pays off in several key ways.

First: although each protagonist received a certain degree of backstory in book one, their fantastical adventures across the Diadem have generally been too propulsive to allow for much retrospection. But Score’s history with his abusive father and his hometown at large inherently generates a more nuanced and interesting plot for him than some generic episodic threat, in addition to showcasing how much he’s grown in his time away — a lesson that author John Peel would return to with subsequent homecomings for the other kids in books seven and nine. The setting also provides some nice culture-clash / fish-out-of-water antics for Pixel and particularly Helaine, whose medieval-like planet of course couldn’t prepare her for technologies like cell phones, helicopters, and guns. Her comedic distrust of such things feels straight out of a Doctor Who serial with the companion Leela, while Pixel’s more muted reaction to how basic everything seems from his advanced perspective renders him rather like the Star Trek crew in the movie with the whales.

The city is also a familiar environment for readers, which means Peel isn’t tasked with as much worldbuilding or descriptive exposition, and Earth’s status as a rim world entails that no one can manifest much magic for good or for ill. Suddenly our child sorcerers are cut off from the bulk of their powers, forcing them to rely more on their wits to defeat their latest enemies.

All of those strengths are more or less baked into the premise of this tale, but the execution is great, too. There are betrayals and other twists, including a redemption arc for Score’s dad that doesn’t ignore or forgive his earlier actions, and the hokey puzzles are thankfully at a minimum. The characters are continuing to develop nicely, and while the romantic attraction between Score and Helaine is still unacknowledged by either, their relationship grows a lot closer through their ordeal here, which includes a moment when they have to pretend to kiss in order to evade capture. What a gift for the shippers out there! And although the story closes on yet another cliffhanger, at least this time it’s a climactic result that has built up over the course of the preceding events, rather than coming out of nowhere at the last minute.

My biggest critique is how this novel handles a new character in a wheelchair, whose lifelong disability is framed as a punishment and a trap and is ultimately healed with magic, which didn’t bother me as a kid but in hindsight I would call more than a tad problematic. Nevertheless, for a middle-grade title from a quarter-century ago, it holds up pretty well overall. I think this volume is the main reason I look back on the whole series so fondly, and I only wish the rest of them could have matched it in quality.

★★★★★

Like this review?
–Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
–Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
–Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
–Or click here to browse through all my reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog