Odd Too

I did warn you that I might get through these Dean K ones a bit quicker!
I just completed the second one in the Odd Thomas series. I also had a peek at the first paragraph of the third one in the series (Brother Odd) but had to stop myself as otherwise I was not going to have any time to write this review today.


#### SPOILER ALERT ####



Forever Odd - Dean Koontz
Basic story: one of Odd's best friends, Danny is taken from his home and Odd goes to find him.

This one was in some ways different from the first one. The main thing that I noticed was the pace of it. This one felt like it started out at a much slower pace. It's not that nothing happens in the first couple of hundred pages but they read much slower than the second half of the book. Maybe this has to do with the fact that it takes him till about halfway through the novel to find who he needs to find and get to the location the person has been taken. once he gets to where the bad guys are things kick off. But I think it is more than that. There is less biting, black humour in the first part, less anger, less confrontation with evil and perhaps more resignation and inaction. The person who has taken his friend a completely psycho lady called Datura) initially communicates with Odd via the phone (the conversations between them are some if the weirdest I have ever read) and thus creates distance in the relationship between pursuer and pursued. Usually these two roles are closely linked from the start with Odd as he feels out/senses his "prey" but this time it's different. Once Odd get closer to his target the story picks up the pace and we hurtle into the adventure full on. People get killed, poltergeists appear, shots are fired, there's climbing through soot filled ducts and plenty of other weird stuff happens (as per usual). Yet Odd manages to keep his balance in all of it, he makes a conscious decision that inaction is not going to get things done and realises that he has no choice but to commit himself fully to getting himself and his friend out of the sticky situation they find themselves in. It seems that the characteristic black humour comes back to Odd with his decision to take action. I definitely like sarcastic Odd better than thoughtful, inactive Odd.
The nice thing is that the bad guys all get their come uppeance but in a way they only die to move along the story, to drive on Odd to get himself and his friend out alive. Once Datura is killed the main venom goes out of the story and the chase at the end is maybe a bit drawn out but hey.. I love Odd and the main thing is he comes out of it all okay.

Last time I mentioned that Koontz hides little gems in his story - I guess you can call them life lessons or life opinions. One of them is on page 156. The main part of the story takes place in a casino ravaged by earthquake and fire so the place is now a ruin. Of the gamblers that used to go there he says: Those who had never gotten wealthy but had become compulsive gamblers were inconvenienced by the need to travel farther to lose what little they had. Okay, so he is not making a fully fledged attack on the gambling industry but he still gently passes judgement on people that gamble. He does at times make a few of these social comments. In my judgement they betray the writer's opinion of the world and will give you an insight in what makes him tick as a person and author.
Another good one on page 355 about making choices: ... we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on signs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgement.
Another gratifying thing about this part of the Odd story is that he finds answers to some if the questions he has been wrestling with, and to some extent they are the questions that all of mankind wrestles with. Also he discovers what makes one of his dearest ghost friends hangs around him all the time.


The "dazzler" at the end is that he decides to join a monastery... this is no huge spoiler as the next book in the series is called Brother Odd so I thought I would give you that one.. it's on the house.

Title: Forever Odd
Author: Dean Koontz
pages 419
Harper Collins
0-00-719699-7


Books bought: 0
Books to be read: 70

I'm off to read the third one!!