Forever Odd & Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Since this is a series, I'll discuss these two together.

I'd borrowed the second and third, but as the people owning the series had lost the second and fourth, I just went ahead and read them out of order. This entry will be pretty spoiler-heavy as it's hard to discuss any of the events in the latter books without revealing what caused them.

Brief Summary:
A young fry cook named Odd Thomas can see ghosts, spirits and the occasional "other" sort of entity. He uses this sensitivity to help solve the murders of some of these ghosts, aid others in crossing over and to even help stop or prevent certain tragedies (like a shooting or the full scale slaughter of the entire population of a monastery). The love of his live and soulmate, Stormy, is killed in the first book, though it isn't immediately apparent that she actually dies (it's kinda like a less crappy scene from Ghost... only less pottery wheel and bad early nineties hair), so a lot of the rest of the novels deals with him dealing with his grief.
Odd is also haunted by the ghost of Elvis, who believes that Odd is his best hope of crossing over and then later by the ghost of Frank Sinatra, who even helps him out by exhibiting poltergeist tendencies when provoked. His companion in the last two book is a ghost labrador affectionately named Boo. His human compatriots include a chief of police who helps keep him out of the public eye, the folk he's gotten to know at the diner where he became a fry cook and his friend Ozzie, an overweight gourmet-slash-mystery writer. Over the series, Odd prevents a shooting spree, helps save a friend who's kidnapped by an occult-obsessed woman who wants to exploit Odd's sensitivity to spirits and his magnetism for energies, rids a monastery of quasi-mystical science conjured creatures and prevents a pregnant woman from being murdered and the US getting nuked by your typical evil to the bone group of morons.


Forever Odd:
I liked this one. I often find myself a little... embarassed? when I read something like this, the sort of grocery store novels that a lot of my more literary-minded friends would just sneer at. It's easy to dismiss anything popular as trash but darn it, it's enjoyable. Think of it as popcorn literature. You can't always go around eating rich foods, you'd die of surfeit. Same with books. Everything can't be so overtly serious, in the intellectual sense. Either way, I liked it.

In the aftermath of Stormy's death, Odd's having a hard time with his life as Elvis is with passing on. His childhood buddy Danny gets kidnapped by a psychopath who wants to use him to make Odd use his powers according to her designs and he's got to come to the rescue. I think the main part of this novel that stuck with me was the guilt. The recurring theory that Elvis lingers because of the guilt he feels at facing his mom after dying a superstar, but one with a drug problem and unfulfilled potential. Danny's guilt at having revealed so much as to inspire the psycho to want to use Odd's powers. Odd's guilt and grief deal with not only his inability to use his 'gift' to prevent Stormy's death, but the fact that it can harm people he loves no matter the circumstance. At the end, it's no surprise that Odd ends up escaping to the would-be peace of a monastery.

I view this entire series as a coming of age story. So this particular book reminded me of the end of your teen years, end of high school. You're further along in figuring out who you are, but you've never had to test it. If you linger, you won't grow, you won't be productive and you might even just become a burden on the people you love. So you deal with the sucky parts of moving on and then you do it. Pretty straightforward, though the metaphor I just made here is entirely my own baggage coming out to play. It never mentions anything like that in the book.

Odd Hours:
Odd has helped Elvis cross over and vanquished the monastery monsters and he's now working as a chef/assistant to former movie star. Now he has Frank Sinatra hanging around and the spectral dog, Boo. He dreams of a pregnant woman who he's seen at the lighthouse he often visits to look over the ocean. Suffice to say, amidst drama, intrigue, coyotes and lots of shennanigans, Odd manages to save the lady, Annamaria, from being murdered and the US from being nuked.

I still kind of look at the nuclear attack storyline askance. It made me kinda go, huh, really? REALLY? But within the world of the story, it's sorta forgivable. This was the book that made me realise, too, what a dog lover Dean Koontz is. There's references to the joy provided by dogs, discussion of how unlike humans, most dogs prefer not to linger, talk about the way dogs laugh. It made me like the book a little better. I'm beginning to realise how all-encompassing my passion for dogs and animal welfare really is. This was, in my opinion, one of the weaker of the series as far as story and stronger in terms of theme. Although I highly enjoyed it and would read it again, I wouldn't describe it as my favorite.

The overwhelming theme I got from this one was loneliness. If I stick to my coming of age story idea, this is more like your early midtwenties. You've done a lot of your growing up, but you're not quite done. You've got a pretty good idea of what you can do with who you are, but not how to apply it quite yet. You're setting down roots, but you don't know where you belong. Odd can't make friends, can't stay in one place because he has to use his gift to help but he's constantly bombarded by serendipity and the chance good he witnesses in strangers. It helps balance out the cruelty and out and out evil he witnesses in the world.


Wrap It Up:
This series is, maybe as should be expected, a little predictable and at times kind of over the top. But above all, it's fun. It's easy to read and has characters that I really liked and cared for. I don't mind suspending my disbelief and accepting that, yeah, a fry cook can see things others can't. That there are real evil, real monsters and real interactions with them in the world. So I'm pretty excited about this series, still, and I'm really looking forward to reading the graphic novel, In Odd We Trust and whatever future titles Dean Koontz churns out. Bring on the popcorn.