The Midnight Game

Strange Matter #2

by Johnny Ray Barnes, Johnny Ray Barnes

When Tyler Webb defies his parents' orders and attends a bizarre midnight football game, he finds two competing teams composed of zombies

Genres: Paranormal

Paperback

First published November 1, 1995

Reviews

[Shiv (The Horrorlander) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story's about a kid on the school football team who sees a strange figure known as the "Dust Man' after practice one night, leaving behind a ticket invitation to a midnight football game. After finding out about a mystery regarding a football game in town several decades ago which lead to the town being haunted, discovering his grandfather may play a role in it, and the dead quarterback's sentient skeleton hand breaking into his room to steal back his ring: our MC finds himself trapped in an undead rivalry game.

There is some disturbing visuals with the zombified threats and in the climax, mixing some fun aspects to it with the football plays. The mystery behind the town gradually being uncovered piece by piece by our group of characters was also intriguing. However, there are aspects to what's going on in the story which do feel a little confusing and random, specifically with the extent of the hauntings and what exactly is taking place. Once the reveal comes in, it works but same time the story felt wrapped up quickly.

7.4/10 Decent

[Coley Weed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in reading this title as I am a big football fan and played football for a decent part of my life. Given this I had rather big expectations for this book to really feel like a football story. Having read an interview with the authors, Barnes actually chose this as the one book he wish he had a chance to do again. He stated that he felt that he set up too much for what could be paid off in the amount of pages available. I feel this is a perfect representation of how I feel about this book.

The concept is overall pretty darn great, an undead football team who is returning to play their last game. The issue that arises is how the time in the book is utilized. The first game that the undead play should have been effectively wiped from the book. It does not really make any sense as they want the protagonist to play for them, only to reveal that they are bad and his real team must play them for the final game. Sooo do they still not have a kicker? Who was the other undead team in the first game and why are they bound by Tom Maul? Why would they want to play with the protagonist only to want to beat his team later? It just raises too many questions that you suddenly realize won’t be answered towards the end of the book.

What really works in this book is the undead imagery, the pursuit of answers by the characters, and the concept of a unexperienced team playing a semi-pro undead team for the fate of their town. The latter is the key to success and unfortunately it is the part of the book that gets the least amount of time. I feel to fix the book we get rid of the first game that was played and instead have the meat of the book be the game that settles the fate of the town. The authors would have needed to read up more about the game and its rules, and likely changed the main characters position so that he would be more involved in the game. But having the game be about the team getting beat up by the ghouls only to realize they need to change their approach. The team would start targeting the undead weak spots and breaking them down slowly. Instead of the game being first touchdown wins it could have been a full game that spanned most of the book. This could have been set in the past so the characters could also do some investigating to find out what happened to cause all of this.

Overall it is a great concept that is executed in an ok fashion. By all means it is a perfectly fine book but I do think that the author tired to do a little too much, when a rather basic football game story could have been much more impactful.

[Alex Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean, what do I say? Strange Matter is the best fucking middle-grade horror series I’ve ever read, and it’s barely even close. Unsurprisingly, this entry was fantastic, even though I had my doubts (I’m not into sports, so I was fearing some dulled enjoyment). This series is the most consistently entertaining and well-crafted shit I’ve read from this genre, so I can’t even act shocked anymore. Alright, enough general glaze: let’s glaze in more specific ways. The plot of this book is super engaging and there’s some great revelations throughout that disallows for a dull moment. There’s great concepts/ideas thrown in (original or not), like the hand stuff and how the ‘midnight game’ worked, and what it was all about. The main character is really good, generally ALL of the characters are pretty alright for what we get of them, and I really liked the skeletal imagery here; animated skeletons are my favorite entity type in these books, and there were plenty here. The book is tense as well as entertaining, the pacing is on-point, the fate of the main antagonist is gross af, and the stakes are decently high (in a unique-ish way). Legitimately, I could go on all day… but you get the point. I do wanna say, though, that I felt the book was a bit meandering in the first half (but not much at all), and that I was a bit taken out by the sports stuff. I’m not into sports, especially Football, so I wasn’t exactly eating all of that up, but thankfully everything else made that stuff more fun that it would’ve been had it just been like Horror at Camp JellyJam, where it was blatant sports scenes with mere spooky interpretations. No, the sports ARE the spooks here—mostly. Overall—oh, come on? You know it’s a damn 10/10. Strgoat Mgoatter. Peak Matter. Rilo Buru, please marry me and adopt a Dero. This series is peaking and whilst this isn’t my favorite it’s still top one-hundred kids-horror books OAT as of now.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was way better than it had any right to be. If you're expecting something absurd after gazing upon the lovely CGI rendered book cover with the snarling cartoon skeletons (and I'm describing the best cover for this book; I don't even know what's going on with the eBook release), you'll instead be pleasantly surprised by a story of ephemeral time travel, a town under a vengeful curse caused by a bad football game during The Great Depression, a kid unearthing his grandfather's mysterious past, and the undead playing for their right to finally rest.

That isn't to say that there isn't any corniness in this book and that they're treating this subject matter completely seriously, since at one point this same kid bursts through a zombie's chest in order to make a field goal and a zombie apocalypse is used as a threat by an undead football player. But they definitely gave this some gravitas that I was not expecting.

Let me put it this way - I hated sports so much as a high schooler that I took four years of marching band just so I'd never have to take a single semester of P. E. and even I got invested.

The main thing holding this book back is that, since it's written for a grade school audience, the page length is at a very brisk 118 pages and the reading level is, you know, for kids. I almost want to see someone like Stephen King tackle this story outline - maybe focus more on the story of the town and how it was shaped by the decisions made in this one football game - and turn it into the horrifying novella that it's destined to be.

[Lacy Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book was okay but not the best ever. It was just okay and I read the first book “Strange Matter” last year because I discovered it while in my school library and thought it looked interesting so I checked it out. Let me tell you the first book is way way better than the second that is for sure. I asked my mom for the second one for Christmas and she got me the third one too so yeah it”s just okay.

[Lacy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book was okay but not the best ever. It was just okay and I read the first book "Strange Matter' last year because I discovered it while in my school library and thought it looked interesting so I checked it out. Let me tell you the first book is way way better than the second that is for sure. I asked my mom for the second one for Christmas and she got me the third one too so yeah it's just okay. Defiantly would not recommend it at all.

[Cws]

JEAR3-Bar