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Diadem Worlds of Magic #9
Book of Reality
Book of Reality finds Score, Helaine, Pixel, and Jenna journeying back to Calomir, Pixel's home planet of virtual reality. Pixel hasn't been back to Calomir since being snatched from the futuristic planet when he was first pulled into the magic and danger of the Diadem. Pixel wants to see his parents again-and bring Jenna home to meet them.
But instead of a happy homecoming, the four young magic-users find treachery, slavery, and deceit on Calomir, including a dark secret from Pixel's past. Can they find Pixel's parents, liberate the enslaved Drones, and win the battle against the evil force that not only controls Calomir, but also intends to conquer the entire Diadem?
But instead of a happy homecoming, the four young magic-users find treachery, slavery, and deceit on Calomir, including a dark secret from Pixel's past. Can they find Pixel's parents, liberate the enslaved Drones, and win the battle against the evil force that not only controls Calomir, but also intends to conquer the entire Diadem?
216 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2006
2 people are currently reading
223 people want to read
About the author
John Peel
421 books166 followersJohn Peel is the author of Doctor Who books and comic strips. Notably, he wrote the first original Doctor Who novel, Timewyrm: Genesys, to launch the Virgin New Adventures line. In the early 1990s he was commissioned by Target Books to write novelisations of several key Terry Nation Dalek stories of the 1960s after the rights were finally worked out. He later wrote several more original Daleks novels.
He has the distinction of being one of only three authors credited on a Target novelisation who had not either written a story for the TV series or been a part of the production team (the others were Nigel Robinson and Alison Bingeman).
Outside of Doctor Who, Peel has also written novels for the Star Trek franchise. Under the pseudonym "John Vincent", he wrote novelisations based upon episodes of the 1990s TV series James Bond Jr..
He has the distinction of being one of only three authors credited on a Target novelisation who had not either written a story for the TV series or been a part of the production team (the others were Nigel Robinson and Alison Bingeman).
Outside of Doctor Who, Peel has also written novels for the Star Trek franchise. Under the pseudonym "John Vincent", he wrote novelisations based upon episodes of the 1990s TV series James Bond Jr..
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 26, 2010
Diadem #9: Book of Reality, by John Peel
It's Pixel's turn to return to his home planet of Calomir, a world where the citizens live in Virtual Reality. Pixel wants to introduce his girlfriend and fellow magic-user Jenna, to his parents.
Only...there's one little problem with that. When the gang arrives on Calomir, they learn that Pixel's parents are missing. When they start to search for the missing adults, the four are soon split up and in dire straits. Jenna and Pixel are captured by the Overmind, a computer virus that's taken over the planet, and Score and Helaine are sent to the slave camps.
I really really enjoyed "Book of Reality." The idea of the Overmind was pretty interesting, and a little scary too.
As is his usual, Peel ends this book on a cliffhanger, and wow! I rushed for the next book to see what would happen next, because I definitely didn't see the plot twist coming.
5/5.
It's Pixel's turn to return to his home planet of Calomir, a world where the citizens live in Virtual Reality. Pixel wants to introduce his girlfriend and fellow magic-user Jenna, to his parents.
Only...there's one little problem with that. When the gang arrives on Calomir, they learn that Pixel's parents are missing. When they start to search for the missing adults, the four are soon split up and in dire straits. Jenna and Pixel are captured by the Overmind, a computer virus that's taken over the planet, and Score and Helaine are sent to the slave camps.
I really really enjoyed "Book of Reality." The idea of the Overmind was pretty interesting, and a little scary too.
As is his usual, Peel ends this book on a cliffhanger, and wow! I rushed for the next book to see what would happen next, because I definitely didn't see the plot twist coming.
5/5.
April 5, 2024
It's finally Pixel's turn to revisit his original homeworld, and just like Score in Book #5 and Helaine in Book #7, the protagonist's reentry into the wreckage of his previous life offers certain immediate stakes and pre-existing relationships to help drive the plot. In fact, the initial premise here is rather simple: the blue-skinned boy is happy with his new girlfriend Jenna and wants to introduce her to his parents, whom he remembers fondly even though the family mostly all kept to their own separate virtual reality pods when he was growing up.
Upon arrival, however, he discovers that the situation on Calomir is even more dystopian than he'd realized -- not only a stratified society where unseen slave labor keeps people in his class comfortable, but one ruled by a malevolent A.I. secretly draining their intelligence to power its own. (A great pulpy line from the villain's introductory scene, about Pixel going offworld: "What he has done is so unthinkably forbidden that I have not even decreed laws against it yet.") The hero's mother and father aren't even real; it turns out that each smart House contains merely a single child with standard implanted memories of distant caregivers to render them docile. When the kids burn out or prove otherwise unsuitable for the program, they are removed and sentenced to the nearest work camp.
So of course, the young magic-users have to do something about that (and readers have to ignore how Pixel, who was horrified to learn about the camps back in the first novel, has never bothered to return here and address the problem before now). Author John Peel is also a Doctor Who writer, and this story made me belatedly realize how by this point, he's basically transformed the Diadem series into a YA fantasy version of that. The good guys arrive somewhere new at the start of an installment, foil the evil scheme that's currently underfoot or whatever the local injustice happens to be, and then depart again ahead of the fallout without ever really explaining who they are to the resident bystanders.
But hey, it's a formula that works, and it's deployed pretty well in this particular title. The teens outthink their artificial enemy and surprise it with abilities beyond its understanding, inspire an uprising against the system, and drop in some pointed ACAB critiques of the jackbooted police enablers. Score and Helaine take a few further steps towards emotional intimacy and honesty about their romantic feelings for each other. The ending drops the ball a little with the sudden cliffhanger swap of one antagonist for another without much build-up, and the book at large completely ignores the still-open mystery of what hidden foe was behind the events of the last volume, but overall, I'd say that this is one of the better entries of its saga.
[Content warning for torture and implied rape / forced breeding.]
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Upon arrival, however, he discovers that the situation on Calomir is even more dystopian than he'd realized -- not only a stratified society where unseen slave labor keeps people in his class comfortable, but one ruled by a malevolent A.I. secretly draining their intelligence to power its own. (A great pulpy line from the villain's introductory scene, about Pixel going offworld: "What he has done is so unthinkably forbidden that I have not even decreed laws against it yet.") The hero's mother and father aren't even real; it turns out that each smart House contains merely a single child with standard implanted memories of distant caregivers to render them docile. When the kids burn out or prove otherwise unsuitable for the program, they are removed and sentenced to the nearest work camp.
So of course, the young magic-users have to do something about that (and readers have to ignore how Pixel, who was horrified to learn about the camps back in the first novel, has never bothered to return here and address the problem before now). Author John Peel is also a Doctor Who writer, and this story made me belatedly realize how by this point, he's basically transformed the Diadem series into a YA fantasy version of that. The good guys arrive somewhere new at the start of an installment, foil the evil scheme that's currently underfoot or whatever the local injustice happens to be, and then depart again ahead of the fallout without ever really explaining who they are to the resident bystanders.
But hey, it's a formula that works, and it's deployed pretty well in this particular title. The teens outthink their artificial enemy and surprise it with abilities beyond its understanding, inspire an uprising against the system, and drop in some pointed ACAB critiques of the jackbooted police enablers. Score and Helaine take a few further steps towards emotional intimacy and honesty about their romantic feelings for each other. The ending drops the ball a little with the sudden cliffhanger swap of one antagonist for another without much build-up, and the book at large completely ignores the still-open mystery of what hidden foe was behind the events of the last volume, but overall, I'd say that this is one of the better entries of its saga.
[Content warning for torture and implied rape / forced breeding.]
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/6...
--Or click here to browse through all my reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
September 9, 2020
Peel's prose is unlikely to win any awards, but the kids are engaging, and a few of the exchanges hit awfully close to home.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews