Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz

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.