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Strange Matter #10
Knightmare
Dared by a school friend, Mitchell steals a valuable artifact from an elaborate suit of armor at the museum, beginning a series of terrifying nightmares that could turn out to be all too real.
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First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 10, 2026
The first of the double-digit Strange Matters follows the kids’ horror trope of suits of armor coming to life, but takes a very different approach to it that was (unsurprisingly) awesome. Knightmare is guilty of leaning into fantasy a bit which I found super fun, and I really enjoyed the monsters thrown in here alongside the final battle at the end of the book, which is genuinely peak kids’ fiction. The characters are likable and the writing is series standard (pretty good), the ending is great and even seems to be building up Strange Forces a tiny bit which is cool to see, and there was even a moral which was nice. All-in-all a really solid entry with a great story, high entertainment value, and good lore-building. My only true complaint here is the weaker first fourth; I found it a bit dumb how things got rolling, and the nightmare stuff—whilst important—was poorly placed and could’ve been handled better. This’d been perfect had the exposition been better. Overall, 9/10. A very fun volume from the Strange Matter series that only makes me love ts more. And as tradition, here’s an update on me and my wife, Strange Matter: our child, Rilo Strange/Buru, found out we joined a cult and now he’s into that goth stuff. Now that’s what I call… a StRaNge mATtEr!!!!
October 22, 2020
Time for our third helping from Strange Matter. Our first was pretty good of a bit slight story-wise, our second was even better with a great use of continuity. This one is likely the weakest o far but it's still pretty good.
It centers around Mitchell, who is currently a laughing stock at school due to once once failing to stand up to a bully and now said bully is always on him. One day he and one of his only friends Howard are at the new museum where they just got some knight stuff. They see some thingy around one knight's neck and Howard convinces Mitchell to take it and pin on the bully as revenge. Due to the peer pressure he does but it happens to turn out to be the only thing preventing an anicent evil wizard from coming back to take over the world.
Whoops.
So this one actually attempts some character growth, although it's just a basic coward becomes stronger kind of thing. It's also a "don't steal and if you do, fess up to it" moral and it kinda bashes you over the head with it. I like the conflict for him but it is on the nose, and the guilt hits too early. Things get started quite quickly and it doesn't lead too much filler later, for the most part at least.
He is first plagued by a big long that basically prepares him for later, when the back blurb implies many dreams happen over time and I kinda wish that happened to make it a slower burn. Anyway, this story is basically a fantasy adventure and a pretty fun one. There's decent action and some cool monsters that attack.
The backstory for the villain is cool and gives the story a feeling of being bigger than usual for these and I appreciated that. There's also one dark part in it just cuz most of this series have a dark quota to fill.
The climax and ending are even more satisfying than usual. There's also some continuity, as apparently the bully was in a previous book and there's a name drop of a previous protagonist. Also, one guy named Ivan becomes inspired to look further into the weird-ness of Fairfield after seeing all this, and the ending note kind of seems to lead into the Strange Forces series where the first 10 protagonists, including Mitchell as this was Book 10, team up to stop a big threat. That's neat.
On a smaller note, while Howard is generally a bad friend he does a good moment at the end. Kerri the female friend could have been more active (at least she's not a damsel like she was in the dream...or the backstory at the start as the bully was bugging her and people were expect Mitchell to defend her honor or some such nonsense), but she does figure out the big backstory through research at least.
Btw, those weird stylized quirks like too many CAPS and italics is still here but there's only like 1 unneeded space at least. But now sometimes the yelling is in Bold for no reason. The villain's speech is stylized in a cool way but it honestly slightly hard to read at times. I hopefully won't harp on this in other books unless something new that is annoying pops up or it's not present at all.
Speaking of the writing, this if the first one I read that is in first person and thankfully the writtig is still good although slightly lesser, some good vocab words though.
Overall, it's a pretty fun adventure with a solid lead and a good backstory for the villain. There's some wonky pacing and despite how big it feels, it's slightly less impressive than the others so far. Still a bit of good medieval fun.
It centers around Mitchell, who is currently a laughing stock at school due to once once failing to stand up to a bully and now said bully is always on him. One day he and one of his only friends Howard are at the new museum where they just got some knight stuff. They see some thingy around one knight's neck and Howard convinces Mitchell to take it and pin on the bully as revenge. Due to the peer pressure he does but it happens to turn out to be the only thing preventing an anicent evil wizard from coming back to take over the world.
Whoops.
So this one actually attempts some character growth, although it's just a basic coward becomes stronger kind of thing. It's also a "don't steal and if you do, fess up to it" moral and it kinda bashes you over the head with it. I like the conflict for him but it is on the nose, and the guilt hits too early. Things get started quite quickly and it doesn't lead too much filler later, for the most part at least.
He is first plagued by a big long that basically prepares him for later, when the back blurb implies many dreams happen over time and I kinda wish that happened to make it a slower burn. Anyway, this story is basically a fantasy adventure and a pretty fun one. There's decent action and some cool monsters that attack.
The backstory for the villain is cool and gives the story a feeling of being bigger than usual for these and I appreciated that. There's also one dark part in it just cuz most of this series have a dark quota to fill.
The climax and ending are even more satisfying than usual. There's also some continuity, as apparently the bully was in a previous book and there's a name drop of a previous protagonist. Also, one guy named Ivan becomes inspired to look further into the weird-ness of Fairfield after seeing all this, and the ending note kind of seems to lead into the Strange Forces series where the first 10 protagonists, including Mitchell as this was Book 10, team up to stop a big threat. That's neat.
On a smaller note, while Howard is generally a bad friend he does a good moment at the end. Kerri the female friend could have been more active (at least she's not a damsel like she was in the dream...or the backstory at the start as the bully was bugging her and people were expect Mitchell to defend her honor or some such nonsense), but she does figure out the big backstory through research at least.
Btw, those weird stylized quirks like too many CAPS and italics is still here but there's only like 1 unneeded space at least. But now sometimes the yelling is in Bold for no reason. The villain's speech is stylized in a cool way but it honestly slightly hard to read at times. I hopefully won't harp on this in other books unless something new that is annoying pops up or it's not present at all.
Speaking of the writing, this if the first one I read that is in first person and thankfully the writtig is still good although slightly lesser, some good vocab words though.
Overall, it's a pretty fun adventure with a solid lead and a good backstory for the villain. There's some wonky pacing and despite how big it feels, it's slightly less impressive than the others so far. Still a bit of good medieval fun.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews