annieb123
Written on Jul 4, 2021
Diary of an 8-Bit Warrior: Path of the Diamond is the fourth adventure for Runt and friends by Cube Kid. Originally published in 2017, this reformat and re-release from Simon & Schuster on their Andrews McMeel imprint is 285 pages and available in audio and ebook formats.
This is an engaging and action filled adventure for Runt and his friends. Zombies are attacking, Pebble and his gang are trying to blow up Runt and frame him for destroying the wall, and even worse, school exams are coming up. Although the story is clearly aimed at young readers 7-12 years of age (Lexile 570), there's quite a lot of subtle humor to appeal to adults/older readers.
The audio format is charmingly narrated by Michael Gallagher. The total run time is 3 hours and 40 minutes and the narrator does a really good job of keeping the characters' voices distinct and easy to follow. There's a lot of rapid dialogue, so the narrative gymnastics are fairly impressive.
This is the 4th volume in the series, and although I had no trouble understanding what was going on, readers will need either a good understanding of Minecraft, or having read the other books in order, at a bare minimum.
I enjoyed this one and would heartily recommend it to fans of Minecraft, gaming adventures, RPGs, as well as public or school library acquisition. It might make a good choice for road trip listening, especially if there are young gamers along for the ride.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.