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Strange Forces #2
Strange Forces 2
Book by Engle n Barnes
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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November 12, 2020
Time for round of our journey through this Strange Matter spin off thingy. This will have light spoilers for the first one but nothing big.
This starts a bit after the last one as the group of kids are still hanging out with Rilo the Buru. See, during the first one he gave them these special powers that let them transform into various creatures so he is helping them train to hone these powers, but under the hopes they wouldn't need to use them in a fight again.
So of course aside from catching wind of where The Collecter is now,a new big bad comes to town with plans to hunt down this rare powerful race of monsters so that he can basically genocide them and become the most powerful person in the world.
So this was pretty good, but not quite as much as the first one. Nothing too bad for flaws, it just a general sense of being a bit more of the same. At least the big bad at first has a new unique motivation...until they have to get a new McGuffin before he can get to it. What they do with it is cool but still.
Everything here still works well for similar reasons as the first one. There's a lot of good action and it at least has a new location, taking place mostly in the Congo which allows for some new variety. The highlight comes when they enter a temple and we get Indiana Jones-esque traps they gotta face.
The new villain is less interesting than The Collector wise but he is still decently threatening with his goals and I like how these two villains end up being at each others throats. The Collector gets used well and there's some interesting its with him there and there.
Character wise, the less important ones from before get trimmed down so out of that third group only the slightly more notable ones are there. That still leaves us with about 10 kids...then two new ones get introduced, Sara White (protagonist of Deadly Delivery and sister of Simon from Creature Features) and new to this series Joey Cook. Joey is at irst just some outsider that does little after the opening but then he gets rather important in the third act. It's in a way that was pretty cool although slightly undeveloped. Sara is just sort of there though, despite being n establish character.
There is slightly more character stuff this time as we see how they work as at team, most notably how Shelly Miller has less of a hold on her powers compared to the others. It does a sot of pay off but it doesn't factor in as much as it should given the rather nice moment we get about it early on.
So it still leaves me wanting more in that regard although hacing so many is less of a problem here due just one main group that gets sectioned off here and there in a way that didn't make things too overwhelming. Still think about 12 at this point is too much though.
The last main thing to mention is that this one seems to have been ghostwritten by me because there's some surprisingly glaring typos at some points. Perhaps it just came about when they were porting it for Kindle, at least I hope so. Either way, early on there's "hear attack" instead of heart attack, and elsewhere there is "Noy" instead of Not, and "att he villaiger's cage", instead of at the. Not like a ton but enough to be a bit weird to see.
(And since I didn't bring it up last time as promised, yes the CAPS and such do carry over to this series lol)
Overall, a bit lesser than the first due to sometimes feeling a bit same-y and not quite pushing certain things enough but still pretty fun with decent use of the villains, some really fun action scenes in the jungle location and a solid ending that leaves me interested in the next one. It's slightly more open ended than the first one while still having a real ending.
So next week we'll have the third one to end this for now since again, have the 4th one elsewhere o I can over it anytime. Hopefully it'll be good like these have been so far.
Side note #1, since last time i found that Simon White was actually first the protagonist of Deadly Delivery along with Sea before later being in Creature Features. That's cool, and explains why he was sidelined in that one. Also, the Drive In incident gets mentioned alongside a list of other weird things that have happened in town since the first Strange Forces, neat
Side note #2: When I did Doorway to Doom, I was under the impression the bully Waylon in that one that was previously in a past book was in at least the first two of these and experienced the traumatic thing that made him stay inside in Doorway. Nope, not seen or mentioned here, and looking it, I read the bit on TV Tropes wrong and that traumatizing thing was in his debut book it seems. Either way, neat continuity in that one)
This starts a bit after the last one as the group of kids are still hanging out with Rilo the Buru. See, during the first one he gave them these special powers that let them transform into various creatures so he is helping them train to hone these powers, but under the hopes they wouldn't need to use them in a fight again.
So of course aside from catching wind of where The Collecter is now,a new big bad comes to town with plans to hunt down this rare powerful race of monsters so that he can basically genocide them and become the most powerful person in the world.
So this was pretty good, but not quite as much as the first one. Nothing too bad for flaws, it just a general sense of being a bit more of the same. At least the big bad at first has a new unique motivation...until they have to get a new McGuffin before he can get to it. What they do with it is cool but still.
Everything here still works well for similar reasons as the first one. There's a lot of good action and it at least has a new location, taking place mostly in the Congo which allows for some new variety. The highlight comes when they enter a temple and we get Indiana Jones-esque traps they gotta face.
The new villain is less interesting than The Collector wise but he is still decently threatening with his goals and I like how these two villains end up being at each others throats. The Collector gets used well and there's some interesting its with him there and there.
Character wise, the less important ones from before get trimmed down so out of that third group only the slightly more notable ones are there. That still leaves us with about 10 kids...then two new ones get introduced, Sara White (protagonist of Deadly Delivery and sister of Simon from Creature Features) and new to this series Joey Cook. Joey is at irst just some outsider that does little after the opening but then he gets rather important in the third act. It's in a way that was pretty cool although slightly undeveloped. Sara is just sort of there though, despite being n establish character.
There is slightly more character stuff this time as we see how they work as at team, most notably how Shelly Miller has less of a hold on her powers compared to the others. It does a sot of pay off but it doesn't factor in as much as it should given the rather nice moment we get about it early on.
So it still leaves me wanting more in that regard although hacing so many is less of a problem here due just one main group that gets sectioned off here and there in a way that didn't make things too overwhelming. Still think about 12 at this point is too much though.
The last main thing to mention is that this one seems to have been ghostwritten by me because there's some surprisingly glaring typos at some points. Perhaps it just came about when they were porting it for Kindle, at least I hope so. Either way, early on there's "hear attack" instead of heart attack, and elsewhere there is "Noy" instead of Not, and "att he villaiger's cage", instead of at the. Not like a ton but enough to be a bit weird to see.
(And since I didn't bring it up last time as promised, yes the CAPS and such do carry over to this series lol)
Overall, a bit lesser than the first due to sometimes feeling a bit same-y and not quite pushing certain things enough but still pretty fun with decent use of the villains, some really fun action scenes in the jungle location and a solid ending that leaves me interested in the next one. It's slightly more open ended than the first one while still having a real ending.
So next week we'll have the third one to end this for now since again, have the 4th one elsewhere o I can over it anytime. Hopefully it'll be good like these have been so far.
Side note #1, since last time i found that Simon White was actually first the protagonist of Deadly Delivery along with Sea before later being in Creature Features. That's cool, and explains why he was sidelined in that one. Also, the Drive In incident gets mentioned alongside a list of other weird things that have happened in town since the first Strange Forces, neat
Side note #2: When I did Doorway to Doom, I was under the impression the bully Waylon in that one that was previously in a past book was in at least the first two of these and experienced the traumatic thing that made him stay inside in Doorway. Nope, not seen or mentioned here, and looking it, I read the bit on TV Tropes wrong and that traumatizing thing was in his debut book it seems. Either way, neat continuity in that one)
Displaying 1 of 1 review