It's hard for me to judge whether or
not "Forever Odd" is a good work; there are lots of good things about it, but there are also lots of awful things. The New York Times called it "...upright, amusing and
sometimes withering, especially when thinking about the state of contemporary
popular culture." Of course they would. The Times book critics tend to praise mediocre writings that support their disapproval of all things modern. The first fifty pages of "Forever Odd" are littered with soliloquys and
descriptive phrases that do nothing to bring the story to life - much less move
the plot forward. I considered throwing this book away in disgust, but "Odd
Thomas", the first book in the series, made for a good graphic novel.
Sticking with it, then, Odd finds his best
friend kidnapped by a superstitious, psychopathic phone-sex worker who intends
to use her hostage as blackmail: she wants Odd to conjure ghosts for her. Odd
Thomas, however, is no medium: he can only see ghosts - not conjure them. He
uses his "psychic magnetism" to track down the crazy hooker and her thugs to a
casino in the Mojave desert. It's a good story; once the narrator stops talking
about his "burden" of having "supernatural powers", which prevents him from
reading, socializing and apparently being anything more than a shut-in, the
action picks up pretty quickly... and promptly breaks down at the end into
philosophical musings about life and death - especially death.
I get it; Dean Koontz is still upset about his wife's death. But the
architecture of the book is like a mash-up between the author's diary and half
of an action novel that he submitted to editors just to meet deadlines. I spent
a good day reading this, and it's quite the page-turner; for serious readers,
though, it ranks no higher than pulp fiction. If I ever met Koontz in person, I
would advise him to get some SERIOUS therapy before picking up the pen again,
and that before starting ANOTHER novel-length monologue, he should learn the
first rule of good fiction writing: show, don't
tell.
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