Lucky Diamond is that rare kind of book that delivers everything it promises. It promises “an exciting Middle Grade magical fantasy quest, full of monsters, witches, and adventure,” and that is what it delivers.

Five orphaned siblings escape from their dreary town on the edge of a forest full of monsters on a quest to return a magical shape-shifting diamond princess to her home before she runs out of energy and turns to glass.  The five children each have a mysterious gift from their mother. These gifts turn out to be magical, and the children must learn how to use them as the adventure unfolds. The children display all the usual virtues required in such stories: courage, compassion, ingenuity, and loyalty. They take turns falling into traps or being captured and rescuing each other. The pace is rapid, and it never lets up. The backstory unfolds gradually, appearing only where it is required to advance the story. It never slows things down. The prose is clear, simple, and effective. 

This is not a book that strives to deliver great philosophical meaning or deep psychological character studies. There is no bleat of oppression, no wallowing in trauma or despair. The bad guys are properly classically bad, the innocents are properly and classically innocent, and the good guys are properly and classically brave and true. And though there is darkness along the way, it is nothing sordid or wretched, but proper classical fairytale darkness, and the ending is properly and classically happy.

If one looked for something to complain about, one might note that the big bad is a little late arriving on the scene, and that the cast, both of heroes and of monsters, grows so large by the end that one almost needs a scorecard. But that is the kind of book this is, a nonstop rollercoaster with new perils and new allies around every corner. 

Its principal appeal will doubtless be to its intended middle-grade audience, to whom its breakneck pace and endless novelties will be bread and butter, but their parents may also find in it something to while away a vacant hour or two. There is violence, of course, of the fairytale kind, but nothing to traumatize or bring a tear to the eye of a normal child. And they all live happily ever after.