Review: The Darziods’ Stone by Richard Smith

The Darziods’ Stone by Richard Smith is a fun middle grade adventure, reading like “The Goonies” set in Cornwall, which will certainly inspire young readers’ sense of adventure.

The book begins with a prologue, which sets the scene nicely, giving the adventure to come a sense of real history – namely Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and the British swift response to it. The reader then finds themselves stranded in Cornwall with a mystical stone that is being desperately hidden by members of the crew, which sets the story for a group of teenagers to crack the code of the missing stone, with sinister factions also looking to find the treasure.

This set-up lights a fuse for a highly inventive mixture of Knights Templar legend, alchemy, aliens, and much more. Thrown into the mix are also some agents who are on the kids’ side – a necessary device that keeps the story at least somewhat grounded in reality.

Each character in the group of kids are fun to follow – each an archetype in the adventurer’s journey, and each serving a specific purpose to keep the story rolling. The kids are naturally smarter than any kids you will ever meet in your life, cracking an unbroken code of over 200 years, but that is part of the fantasy. Smith keeps this just plausible enough that readers can immerse themselves in the idea that this is an adventure they could take as well.

Where the book loses some of its reality, and in turn its sense of adventure, are the baddies that permeate the book, who show up in an almost haphazard fashion that’s a bit indiscriminate from logic. At once, Smith is able to create rich and vivid characters while at the same time slightly overdoing it. However, given the target audience, this will still be plenty entertaining for kids who will have no problem suspending disbelief, especially given how creative and entertaining these bad guys tend to be.

The only problem when considering that audience is whether or not they will all be able to keep up, as it’s a fairly complex read. Though the kids are as old as fourteen, the book is definitely a middle grade read, but certain plot points are written for a young adult’s level of comprehension. This is both a selling point and potentially to its detriment, but certainly Smith never talks down to his readers, adding layers of complexity as the story moves on. There is a varied list of twists and turns and side plots, which could potentially be lost on some beginning readers. But, again, these challenges are inherently valuable, and the plot is well-conceived throughout.

Overall, this is a successful work of middle grade fiction because within this complexity is a creative and entertaining adventure, offering a fantastic blend of history and fantasy. The mixing of mythologies and magic into a teenage adventure story is thoroughly satisfying from beginning to end, and Richard Smith shows himself to be a highly imaginative writer for young readers.