I’ve read these books before, but because the Lance Brody series reminded me so much of this series I started a reread. I purely love this book ( )

Again Koontz has surprised me and sucked me in to a series. I had written him off in the 90s after getting very annoyed with the endings of a number of his books that I read. Having a highly compelling story, full of interesting characters and loaded with tnsion, peter out at the end made me feel robbed.

Now, having read and enjoyed every bit of The Prodical Son and Odd Thomas, I feel like I may have been wrong.

What an excellent story and the ending was nothing short of brilliant. ( )

Not one of my favorites by Koontz, but definitely a good one. ( )

Having heard great things of this series from one or two people, I snapped up the three books that I came across recently in a charity shop. But having read book 1, I'm glad I didn't pay much for them.

The story starts off promisingly with a weird scene in which the protagonist is led by a 12 year old neighbour girl who does not speak into the next street where a teenager is delivering newspapers in the classic car which he customised himself. The story then erupts into action with a horrifying realisation. But after that, things begin to go downhill.

The protagonist tells us he is an unreliable narrator who is writing down what has happened recently at the behest of a friend of his, who is a novelist with a scary cat. It probably wasn't a good idea to signal this so blatantly because it meant that halfway through the book I suddenly realised what was going to happen to the love of the character's life and I wasn't wrong despite the attempts at misdirection through verb tense changes. So I kept expecting that certain event to happen.

Another issue is that the voice of the character doesn't come across as a twenty-year-old. I don't know for sure how it would sound if it did, but although the character is 'odd' by name and by nature - he sees dead people and he can't face leaving his home town because he is so fragile due to having the dead constantly turn up wanting him to resolve their outstanding issues - there is no explanation for why a twenty year old would speak in an artificially elaborate style or be keen on the music of Elvis etc. He seems to have far too much life experience and knowledge for someone so young. And it is not quite believable that his girlfriend tolerates so much of this, especially the refusal to leave town at any time. She is, we are told, ambitious and wants to own her own shop one day which in the real world might entail having to move somewhere else. So I didn't find the main characters convincing.

As far as the main plot goes, I won't say too much other than it revolves around Odd's intuition that a strange looking man who comes into the diner where Odd works and is accompanied by the dark shadowy sineous things that Odd has come to call bodachs (which he has found congregate whenever violence is due to be perpetrated). Odd sets out to investigate the man and try to prevent whatever atrocity he is going to commit. During this investigation he discovers that the stranger's house seems to contain an interdimensional gateway to a dark realm from which the bodachs originate, yet this disappears and is never referenced again. Perhaps an explanation is forthcoming in a later volume.

Another oddity is that the type of violence which bodachs are drawn to seems rather too specific - the horrible death suffered by the young girl at the beginning of the story wasn't enough to trigger off bodach appearances around the murderer. This seemed too convenient, as logically bodachs should have hung around a certain character before the story began and enabled Odd to prevent a terrible crime rather than have to bring the perpertrator to justice. It is also a bit too convenient that certain people know his secret and cover for him when he does catch killers - especially the local police chief - so it is then necessary to get such a person out of the way, as otherwise the resolution would be too easy for Odd. This came across to me as plotting by numbers rather than being organic development from the characters and their interaction.

The main problem however is the issue alluded to above where I guessed the big denoument. I have probably read too many books where the big love of the character's life is killed off at the end - Casino Royale was written long enough ago to be permitted to do this, but it has become rather a trope. It would have been a nice change if the twist had been the opposite instead, and the story and sequels had to tackle the more difficult and interesting situation of how would it be to marry and live day to day with a character such as Odd. Possibly the marriage would not have lasted for long, but if a partner had to cope with his constant preoccupation with helping the dead to achieve their rest and to go onto the next life, that would have been a much more interesting read in my opinion..

Given the reservations after the promising premise I can only rate this as an OK 2 star read.
( )

Just reread this to start the series and the story is still riveting. ( )