I haven't read Dean Koontz in years, and I wanted to see if I'd made a hasty judgment about him being not so good. He wrote a book called "Lightning" that I liked, but others I read were, as they say, "Meh." I picked up this book and the next in the series, "Forever Odd," and thought "sure, why not?"Let me answer that question for you:Dean Koontz' 20 year old I-see-dead-people fry cook character reads like a 20 year old written by a 50-something year old that assumes he can write a believable 20 year old character. Obviously it can be done well by many, but it doesn't work here. 20 yr. olds don't talk like this, they don't think like this, and the last time I met a 20 yr. old male that was vice free and often thought to himself that he'd have fit better in the 1950s---and is a virgin---AND wasn't Mormon was...well, I'm still waiting. Sure, one of those factors is easy enough to find, but the combination is rare enough to give one pause.Do you like books that end at least 15 chapters with a "something bad was on it's way," or "I could feel the danger drawing near," or "Oh my God, things are about to get terrifying!" sort of sentence? Well, this book is up your alley, because about 70% of it feels like that ghost story you heard at camp that took hours and ended up being a kitten trapped in the closet and you wanted to poke the kid who told it but he was the Scout Master's son so you just walked off and cursed under your breath. That's not a spoiler. It's not a kitten that ultimately shows up to let loose the horrors---but that would have been better than what does come.Do you like books that feature a morbidly obese best friend/mentor character, and every scene with that character reads like "You are my friend, but your weight worries me, and I care about you so stop being fat, please." And the friend says "I am glad a fat guy like me can have a friend like you, being as fat as I am---and hey, watch out for my cat, he's fat as well." If so, then this book is for you! Every scene---and it's not just fat characters---reads like judgment, which gets annoying fast.Do you like books that inexplicably feature the ghost of Elvis, and the only music that people listen to are songs by, you guessed it, Elvis! And you get to learn lots of trivia about the King, because one of the main characters is obsessed with him. Yep. 20 yr. olds listen to Elvis all day, don't they?And though this has nothing to do with Koontz' writing, it bugs me nonetheless: I don't like the fact that I have to pretend when looking at Koontz' author photo where he sports a thick brown mop of hair that when I read him in the 80s he looked like Dr. Phil. Maybe not that bald, but balder than now, that's for sure. I don't like that I'm supposed to just pretend that this new thick hair is real. The fiction has to stop somewhere, doesn't it? I think so. That just bugs me a little...I'd write more, but why, really? I may be a bit more harsh than usual, but I just read 2 of these back to back, and am not going to follow Odd to go live in a monastery for the 3rd book, or wherever else he goes in the 4th that's out now. I'm a firm believer in the idea that you have to read the bad with the good in order to appreciate the talent of the writers you love. Koontz isn't a horrible writer, it's just not good, and it's really just not for me. Clearly he's doing ok, and sells books like crazy, so I don't think he'll be worried that I'm not riding in his bandwagon. And honestly, more power to him. This may be somebody's favorite book, and that's great, that's the beauty of books---we don't all have to like the same thing. That said, we're probably much more likely to get along well if this isn't in your top 100.That's all. Two books. One star.A:
Odd Thomas is a 20-year old fry cook, and he can see dead people. It's either a gift or a curse. In less than twenty-four hours, Pico Mundo will awaken to a day of catastrophe, and it's up to Odd to try and prevent it. The thing with this novel is that the plot was terribly slow. Koontz served up a lot of character building, a lot being the first 1/3 of the novel. That is pretty normal, but the result should be satisfactory. While I am really liking Odd as a character, I just don't see him as a 20 year old kid. He seemed like someone who's 30+ years old. He seemed to have so much knowledge crammed in his 20 year old brain. It's just not normal. I'm 19 years old, and I don't think like he does. He was planning marriage as soon as possible, and that is really not normal. Stormy was also quite unrealistic. I don't see why she keeps up with Odd, to be honest. I didn't hate her as a character, but I didn't like her much, compared to other lover of the main character characters.Like I said the plot was slow, and at the time wherein it improved, it was still lacking. This is shelved as horror, and 1018 people contributed to that happening. I don't see this as horror at all. Paranormal maybe, because of the ghosts, but even the possibility of the things that happened in the novel happening in real life is quite unlikely. I liked the whole I can talk to ghosts thing Koontz made, but it hasn't grown on me yet. This is the first novel though, and I'm expecting the next one to be a huge improvement.Whenever I ask people to recommend another author who is quite similar to my favorite, Stephen King, the immediate answer would be Dean Koontz. He does write horror books, and a lot of paranormal ones too, but if I were to judge that comparison based on Odd Thomas, I would honestly say that I can't see the similarities. Koontz writes a lot of info dumps, and takes forever to make the reader like the character/s(for me). I keep hearing amazing things about his other novels though, so I might have to give those a try before concluding. The first novel of his that I've read was not the best, but I'm not giving up on the author, and the series.3/5 stars. Mediocre plot and quite likeable but unrealistic characters. I'm hoping to have a better opinion and experience with the second novel.
What do You think about Odd Thomas (2006)?
I get all of my book recommendations from avid readers. When someone suggest something to me passionately, it’s that passion that makes me want to read it. I avoid best-selling authors because I’ve come to find most best sellers to be seriously underwhelming -- “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” as a case in point. The best I can say about it is “eh, who cares.” I mentioned this to someone, who said I should give Dean Koontz a chance. I remember reading a Koontz novel years ago. Underwhelmed. But I was assured that Odd Thomas was different. The best I can say about Odd Thomas is “eh. Who cares.” The character is interesting, but his world of spirits is contrived (I should talk, right?) but seriously, having written about a spirit-filled alternate reality, I know the importance of world-building, and I felt that, as well- developed and as interesting as the character was, the world was familiar and uninspired. But I think what frustrated me most was the way Koontz got around issues of character logic. Any time he wanted the character to do something that didn’t make sense for the character to do, he relied on a kind of supernatural intuition that told Odd Thomas to go to a particular place, or do a particular thing. All that really was, was the author pulling the character’s strings for the convenience of the story. Shame shame, Dean! But then, perhaps I’m holding Dean Koontz accountable for something that’s really not his fault - the general uninspired nature of popular literature for adult readers. With rare exception it’s all underwhelming to me... You write what the public demands, and eventually you get trapped in that, even if you’re trying to go against expectation, as Koontz did with Odd Thomas.
—Neal Shusterman
Some would even say I am generous with my rating but I guess it will do. This book was one of those paperbacks that I found in a local store that I bought but did not realize I did so until I was out of the store. I liked some of his early work but I never saw Koontz as my choice for a well thought out read. I mainly dislike his characters, but in this case I did not like the ending. Odd, who is an average guy working as a fry cook, can see dead people. Most just linger around him or places they used to visit and most are not dangerous at all, just sad and unable to accept their fate and move on. Odd is not by any means a bad person. He helps people, he listens to adults, and he keeps as much out of trouble as he can. It does help that his friend works for the police department AND believes Odd can see dead people. COME ON,KOONTZ!!!!Anyway, Odd does not really have good parents (one threatens to kill him or kill herself whenever she is forced to provide comfort for her child and the other chases after 18 year old girls and dumps them after 6 to 9 months), but he has a wonderful girlfriend. Odd just seems moppy, even hipster-ish to me. It comes off a bit annoying at times. The bad guy(s) are as cliche as they can be. There was no sense of mystery surrounding them and the explanation of how they became evil was a big load of even bigger cliche shit. Than there was the ending which was not even a bit surprising. The damn bad guy stand off was built and than solved in a paragraph. WTF?? For me it felt like I was watching a movie about some super bad aliens attacking Earth and then promptly deciding to leave once we showed them that we have bigger weapons than hand guns. For most of the book Odd just runs from one place to the next and does not get much done. This was a decent read. I felt like the idea was good but not well developed, or better yet, it had a big potential but it was not broadened enough. I thought this was going to be more of a bunch of bad spirits finding a way to enter our world and Odd stopping them as others give him looks of confusion since they can't see the said spirits. Of well. I am not in a rush to read any other Koontz books. Also, one of the biggest reasons why I like King's books more is that King knows how to write good characters, no matter what age they are. Koontz writes cliche dialogue that ends every chapter in an even bigger cliche and 20 year olds who listen to Elvis. Koontz is not bad author, just not a right one for me.
—Rade
I REALLY wanted to like this novel. The first chapter hooked me-- bad stuff is going to happen to the likable guy who sees dead people. And NOTHING happens for the next 200 pages. Well, almost nothing-- Odd discovers this Black Room with mysteriously cool properties. The Black Room keeps me hooked a little bit longer....but Koontz doesn't even explain what it is or why it's important to the plot. I spent the next 300 pages waiting for Odd to go back to the room, but it's not even mentioned again. Minus the Black Room concept, the book is awful--lame villains, horrible dialogue, and unbelievable situations. Did I mention unbelievable situations? Yeah, Odd and his girlfriend are discussing running off and getting married in Vegas and/or eating tacos while some cataclysmic event looms. I wanted to stop reading, but I was hoping there would be some huge payoff in the end (ie: cataclysmic event or a Black Room explanation). Instead, Koontz ends the novel with a cataclysmically bad and unnecessary plot device that ruined the book even further. As I was reading, I genuinely thought that Koontz published this novel as a big joke-- "Look, my name alone can sell a million copies of crap."No more Koontz or Odd for me.One side note: this novel DID inspire me to write my own fiction. If this guy can do it, anyone can.
—Scott Seaborn
