I feel as though I have been reading a lot of Stephen King books
lately, having worked through the first four books of the Dark Tower series
whilst reading a number of books in between to extend the journey in which it
takes you on, namely Insomnia, The long Walk, Rage, and a number of short
stories from Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and Everything's eventual.
So because of this
I decided to have a look at something a bit different But where to start when
looking for a new author with the hope of not being disappointed and
simply returning to what you know and love? by taking the kings advice of
course, and that's how I found myself with the first instalment of
the Odd Thomas series by Dean koontz, I chose this one simply because I thought
the cover looked nicer than the others.
The story is about
Odd Thomas a fry cook in the town of
Pico Mundo in the Mojave desert in California, and who has a sort of sixth
sense where he can sense and see dead people.
The story occurs
over a short period of time, we are introduced to the sense Odd has after he
sees a young girl who had been raped and murdered and points Odd towards the
culprit who is then arrested.
Odd then goes to
work, it's a normal day until he sees the 'Bodachs' which are dark, black
shadows of sorts who seem to feed off the violence and evil in the world and
seem to be following a certain person in particular. Cutting the story short,
Odd follows him, discovers he's a psycho and that evil stuff s going
to happen and he begins to try and stop it. Usual type of horror crime story.
The story itself
was interesting in the way it was written as I'm used to a far more descriptive
style where everything is scrutinized and dissected so we
are given the image rather than creating the image ourselves, it was an
interesting read but I became increasingly annoyed with Odd's love, Stormy Llewellyn, because
she just seemed way too uptight and snobby compared to poor old Odd who just
wanted a simple life.
My opinions sure
changed when the story took a real dark turn, darker than I expected, yet I am
still unsure as to why I found it so dark. I read a segment where odd had just
ditched a dead body in an abandoned cult church and was confronted by 4 wild
coyotes. . . and a dead naked prostitute.
It was dark and late and I was alone and somehow the way it was
written freaked me out.
The story just
continued to get darker, Odd goes to see his dad who abandoned him at the age
of one and has since spent his life sleeping with girls from the ages of 16 to
18 even though he is almost 50.
That's fucked up!
It's not as fucked
up as his mother who he then goes to meet however, his mother is a complete
psycho who is incapable of dealing with stress or showing love, and as the
entire story is told as a sort of journal entry by Odd after the
story occurred, he reveals that she threatened to kill him and herself
many times throughout his life and abandoned him also. It's one messed up
situation. She's brought across really well as being completely. . .odd.
Odd discovers
what's going to happen through the use of his gift and ends up in the mall where
he is lucky to surprise one of the people who is about to gun the
mall down, he hits him with a bat and one down, one to go.
He makes his way
through the mall and hears gunfire. At this point I was thinking "Hmm. .
he didn't stop the violence? What's going on Mr Koontz?" which is when I
got deeply involved and wanted to shout to Odd and tell him to sort his shit
out, even though he had been through a lot already, trust.
Odd shoots the
second shooter after he had gunned down a lot of people which resulted in 19
deaths in the mall alone, and he is shot himself whilst falling over a bomb and
disarming it. sounds cheesy, but it actually works nicely, it's not realistic,
but it's not way out there either.
I am a guy who reads and
writes a lot so don't go out and have all these crazy encounters, so it may
very well be possible.
Who knows what lies on the other side of my bed room door?
He wakes up in
hospital as a hero, all is well. It is a very dark story and to be honest, even
though I am a huge Stephen King fan I would even say that Dean Koontz portrays
a much darker and horrific story in such a small time frame than any of Stephen
King's books have, except maybe 'Bag of Bones' that is brilliant.
Which leads me on
to the final nail in the coffin of the story. Throughout the story, throughout
the pains and darkness, Stormy is Odd's love who he plans to marry and who he
continuously shows love and affection towards through everything, the
sense of true love and even soul mates is put across very well. This makes the
story not only a horror, but also a sort of romantic novel also, it's a twisted
genre.
Anyway she died, Odd could see her because he sees dead people,
but regardless of it being almost predictable it was still the cherry on the
cake made of violence and darkness. It finished with you feeling truly sorry
for Odd Thomas because his life sucks so bad, and the only comfort he has is
that his 'strange' friends all love him. Even so, he is one unlucky guy.
All he wanted to do was become the best fry cook he could be, and
eventually work in a tyre store while Stormy owned her own ice cream shop.
Simple dreams by very un-simple means.
The story over all
was great, brilliantly dark and captivating with a face paced flow that creates
an atmosphere around all the characters. Dean Koontz, top author,
highly recommend it.
He also does
children's books. . . . .honest.