Something Rotten

Strange Matter #11

by Marty M. Engle, Johnny Ray Barnes

Skinny Joe Alister loves collecting rocks. He's a total fanatic about precious gems and rare stones. From kicking around fields, to scouring construction sites, Joe is always on the lookout for something special to add to his collection.

Joe and his little brother Gary often prowl the underground walkways of Fairfield Caverns hunting for rocks, staying only in the areas open to the public. Today, Joe ignores his brother's warning and explores a dangerous, little-known section of Fairfield Caverns, a half-completed expansion site, far from the main path.

Joe's heart pounds and his eyes widen as he unearths the horrible fate of the missing owner, and makes the most shocking discovery of all.

Joe was looking for something special.

He finds something rotten.

2 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Coley Weed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strong entry from the series that takes on a rather common enemy, but manages to make it interesting all the more. It follows a relatively similar path to other strange matter stories where we have a main character that collects something, finds out its dangerous, and eventually returns to where they found it for the climax. The book is told very tightly starting with a small adventure through a cave for tourists and leading to the chaotic horror element. I found it to follow similar points to toy trouble where the character has their initial scare around the halfway point and then they band together a group to slowly capture or save others impacted by the bad guy. The climax of the book is a showdown at the originating location of where the characters attained the problematic objects. While these books share similar outlines they also manage to feel quite distinct fron one another. Toys coming alive versus acidic oozes coming out of minerals are different enough to not feel that we are experiencing the same story. Issues i found has to do with the small side characters added about halfway into the book and they do not get developed very much, mainly being muscle for our main characters plan to work. The other issue is that of the climax. Returning to the caverns it is not clearly stated why Gerald couldn’t just turn on the caverns light system. As the lights would hurt the ooze, the seemingly only reason the lights don’t go on is to provide a more intense ending. I may have missed something but I do think this detracts from the intensity, especially since the beginning of the book took time to highlight the bright lights of the caverns. The great aspect of something rotten is the deep usage of dark imagery and generally messed up events. Goosebumps often leans hard on the use of oddities and silliness. It is refreshing to read books that show the darker aspect of these stories, where stakes are genuinely high.

[John Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A legit kill in this one.
Dude got blobbed.

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once is luck, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern. This is the third Strange Matter I’ve safely said I’ve absolutely loved—out of four, of course, but no less. This entry has oozed its way into my highest ranking kids horror books OAT. It’s amazing, and I don’t know how to properly stress how much I loved this one. For a biased upside: this book is a blatant homage to the 1988 remake, “The Blob.” Down to the actual threat and the kids watching the film, this is a fantastic, smaller-scale, kids-horror twist on that original idea. Now for legitimate, score-affecting praises: the threat. It’s rotten, it’s oozing—it’s a dero (read the book for context). These guys strike some primal fear within me that I found in the film this is homaging, aka the scariest horror movie OATIMO. They are a genuine threat with some legitimately tense sequences, especially in the climax. The characters are great and there’s some funny, well-written dialogue from them. There’s some heavy/darker elements in this book: someone may or may not be implied to meet their maker, there’s (again) a real and painful threat, and then there’s the ending, which alone is a dreary and melancholic way to close this book, even if it’s unlikely in its future implications. The book was fun and it was one of the easiest reads in a while purely due to its entertainment value. For once I took a break in reading to whole-heartedly savor the rest of the book lol. The writing is good even with its small typos, there’s a lot of interesting ambiguity in everything which I like, and any issues I had with it (say, some scenes that felt mildly coincidence based) I could forgive. Overall, 10/10. A master class in the kids horror space and is only making me thirsty for more of this series. Also, awesome artwork (not the one you see on this app).