I needed a change from all separate stories, short story archs and ghosts in all shapes and sizes so I decided to dive into the wonderful world of Dean Koontz for my next read. The Odd Thomas Series consists of four books and I have to say that the first one was not a bad start to the series.
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Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz
Odd Thomas is odd, the tings that happen to him are odd..... he has some odd friends and meets odd people.. end of review.
Well, maybe not. The people he meets are odd. They are also dead! He helps them resolve their "issues", helps them so they are ready to move on to wherever they go next. Odd does this with good humour, a level head on his shoulders and a small group of friends around him who help him where they can, and support him when he needs it most. Odd is sort of a loner who has not gotten a lot of love from his parents. His dad is obsessed with having girlfriends younger than Odd and Odd's mum is guilt tripping him whenever she can (and I mean Guilt Tripping with a capital G and T). For a boy with that kind of heritage he has turned out okay. Odd has a gift that helps him help the dead. However, his gift cannot always prevent him from losing the things he loves most.
Odd as a character is a lovable person. He is young yet wise, and has a great sense of humour. He is very polite, calls everyone "Sir" and is a short order cook in a grille (and good at it too). He is looking to possibly expand into a career in tyres or shoes once he gets married. The friends he has are as loyal to him as he is to them. He has a girlfriend called Stormy and Odd believes that they are meant to be together. Odd goes through life trying to fit his work with the dead into his work life (frying eggs and making great pancakes at the Pico Mundo). In the main he succeeds in that.
The story is relatively simple and it is set up as if it is a memoir that Odd is writing, looking back on his life. Basically, Odd has found out that something bad is going to happen and he is the one to prevent it. He knows when it's going to happen. At one time he even believes he has figured out who is going to be doing the bad stuff. But things change and shift and not everything works out as he thought it would. See.. told you.. nothing complicated there. Yet the story has you hooked from the start. It is fast paced and the characters in it are so well written and work well together that it all flows and you can do nothing but go with it through all the highs and lows. Koontz does his trick of having the arch of the story run into a new chapter and by that make you go... "oh well, I have to finish this chapter now to find out what's going to happen" only to find that at the end of the next chapter he does the same thing again thus making you read another one and another one until you get to the end of the book and just want more more more!... They are clever things aren't they those writer blokes/blokettes!? Another thing I have noticed about Koontz is that he hides "life's great and/or universal truths" in what his characters say. They will have a converstaion and all of a sudden one character will come out with something that hits home and makes you think. Then after you have read it andmoved on 10 pages you don't even remember what was so profound about what you read but some of it lingers in your mind anyway.
To me, the end of the story is one I partly saw coming and partly but didn't. Because Odd is such a likable character you really feel for what happens to him. It should come as no surprise that bad stuff does happen to him as he is the main character in the book. The way the bad stuff happening is resolved is good as you are taken along on the journey of who and why, and you're finding out things as Odd is puzzling them together. Some of the clues though are quite obviously laid out in the story and yet Odd does seem to miss them. Perhaps because he is focused on something else, but hey.. he's Odd.
One down... three to go and number two is well on the way already.
Title: Odd Thomas
Author: Dean Koontz
420 pages
Harper Collins
0-00-713074-0
Books bought: 0
Books to be read: 71
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