Odd Thomas

Book Review: Odd Hours

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Odd Hours
Odd Thomas #4
by Dean Koontz

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: Paranormal thriller

In a foggy coastal California town, Odd Thomas crosses paths with a mysterious young woman who seems to be in danger. When that danger engulfs him, he will have to use all of his wits and psychic abilities to save his own life and many others.

Like the previous book, this one is a bit of a departure from the main premise set up in the first book of this series, that being Odd getting into situations due to either ghosts visiting him or Bodachs alerting him to some pending danger. In this book, a combination of prophetic dreams and the cryptic woman he meets because of his dream start him off on his latest quest, and though some of his psychic abilities do come into play, they’re more vague and, well, just confusing to me. Not to say that no ghostly activity occurs here, but somehow it’s just not as good as the celebrity ghost from the first three books. And there is at least one paranormal element that I either didn’t follow or isn’t explained at all (even as much as paranormal elements are ever explained in this book). 

One thing I’ve noticed about these books in the past and was amplified here is the tendency for scenes to run on. When it really comes down to it, not a lot actually happened in this book, but when Odd would get into a situation—trying to escape from bad guys or track someone down, things like that—the scene would take several chapters, more than it really seems like it should. The combination of that and the aforementioned issues, and then an unsatisfying ending, made this my least favorite book in the series. I still like Odd as a character and some of the other odd characters he tends to run into, but I’m really hoping the series gets back to its earlier roots going forward.

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Book Review: Brother Odd

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Brother Odd
Odd Thomas #3
by Dean Koontz
Read by David Aaron Baker

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Paranormal thriller

While living in a guest house at a monastery in order to simplify his life, Odd comes across something completely new, even with his penchant for seeing ghosts and other paranormal connections. The bizarre creature seemingly made of bones, combined with the Bodachs that have appeared around the area, leads Odd to believe something bad is about to happen.

This was my favorite book in the series so far. There are a lot of amusing moments in the book, from Odd’s interactions with Elvis to his banter with the suspicious Russian man also staying at the monastery. I continue to enjoy Odd as a character—kind and modest almost to a fault with a strong desire to protect those who are weak. The mystery kept me engaged, though I have to admit that the reveal was a little confusing, even convoluted. But that was really my only issue with the book. I was sad about a chapter that closed at the end of the book, but I look forward to seeing where the series goes. Sadly, I’ll have to fit the rest into my normal reading schedule, because the rest of the audiobooks don’t seem to be available from any of the library services available to me. But I enjoyed this third book enough to be willing to continue on my own.

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Book Review: Forever Odd

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Forever Odd
Odd Thomas #2
by Dean Koontz
Read by David Aaron Baker

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Paranormal thriller

When Odd’s best friend’s recently deceased (like, super recently) father visits him, Odd starts off on a mission to find his friend and save him from whoever seems to have abducted him and killed his father.

After finding the first book in the series interesting but a bit slow, this book is just as slow and less interesting. I still like Odd himself as a character. He’s very different from what you normally see in fiction in a lot of ways, a kind of throwback to a different time. Some reviewers seem to see this as a fault with the book, but I appreciate that his gifts have led him to live a simpler life—he has no real ambition, no need for vices, and in fact, what most people would see as a minor complication would throw his life out of whack completely. However, the first book really felt like a stand-alone. There’s usually a very different feel to a book that is the intentional first in a series compared to a book that was written to be a one-off, and though plenty of times a sequel or two may come after an original stand-alone, to me, this just didn’t work as a sequel. The main thing that I felt was seriously lacking in this book was the use of Odd’s gifts. His psychic magnetism gets plenty of play (and a new angle, unless I’m just forgetting something being mentioned in the first book), and he does see a few ghosts, but it seemed like a huge chunk of the book was just trying to escape from, hide from, and outwit the bad guys. It dragged down what was already a fairly slow read for me. Good thing I listened to the audiobook, or it might have taken me a really long time to get through this book. As for recommendations, if you haven’t read the first book, you probably shouldn’t start here, since it definitely references back and spoils some things. If you have and liked it, you may or may not like this one, depending a lot on which aspects of the first book you particularly liked or didn’t. That’s all I can really say.

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Book Review: Odd Thomas

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Odd Thomas
Book #1
by Dean Koontz
Read by David Aaron Baker

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Paranormal thriller

Odd Thomas can see dead people, but he can also see dark shade-like creatures that tend to congregate at sites of future disaster. Between these two things, Odd is drawn to help bring justice for victims and prevent future tragedies. He works as a short order cook in a small town in California, and when he sees a large congregation of these creatures, which he calls bodachs, interested in a particular customer, he does his best to investigate so he can try to stop whatever future catastrophe might have drawn so many bodachs.

Leaving aside the paranormal aspects, this book is a thriller mystery and a race against time to stop a massacre. Adding the paranormal aspects back in, and the overall story here is engaging and inventive. Odd himself is a sympathetic hero, if maybe a little too naïve and Gary Stu-ish. He tends to draw people to himself by being a nice, quiet guy and has more than one mentor-type character. The background Koontz shows us for Odd make me happy for him that he has these other people in his life to counter-balance some truly awful parents.

I’ve only read one Koontz before this, and I loved it, but this time, I found that his tendency to describe things in way more detail than necessary slowed the story way down. There was also a lot of focus on sex and references to body parts for a book with a main character that isn’t sleeping with his girlfriend. And a couple of the major side characters I did not particularly care for. They were just over the top in their personalities. I listened to the audiobook, and I don’t know if it would have been better to read it, so I could skim some of the descriptions or worse, because then I would have struggled to get through some of it and taken a lot longer to read it. Either way, I enjoyed the book more than not and was actually kind of annoyed with myself for not clocking the slight twist at the end before it happened. Also, I am very glad that I had already read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie before reading this book, because Koontz full-on spoils it! Overall, I like the world Koontz has set up here and Odd Thomas himself enough to continue the series. I think most people who enjoy paranormal thrillers would enjoy it, but just keep in mind the slowness.

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