Martini read and liked Aaron Woodsworth's review of Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, #1):

"I haven't read Dean Koontz in years, and I wanted to see if I'd made a hasty judgment about him being not so good. He wrote a book called "Lightning" that I liked, but others I read were, as they say, "Meh." I picked up this boo...more I haven't read Dean Koontz in years, and I wanted to see if I'd made a hasty judgment about him being not so good. He wrote a book called "Lightning" that I liked, but others I read were, as they say, "Meh." I picked up this book and the next in the series, "Forever Odd," and thought "sure, why not?"

Let me answer that question for you:

Dean Koontz' 20 year old I-see-dead-people fry cook character reads like a 20 year old written by a 50-something year old that assumes he can write a believable 20 year old character. Obviously it can be done well by many, but it doesn't work here. 20 yr. olds don't talk like this, they don't think like this, and the last time I met a 20 yr. old male that was vice free and often thought to himself that he'd have fit better in the 1950s---and is a virgin---AND wasn't Mormon was...well, I'm still waiting. Sure, one of those factors is easy enough to find, but the combination is rare enough to give one pause.

Do you like books that end at least 15 chapters with a "something bad was on it's way," or "I could feel the danger drawing near," or "Oh my God, things are about to get terrifying!" sort of sentence? Well, this book is up your alley, because about 70% of it feels like that ghost story you heard at camp that took hours and ended up being a kitten trapped in the closet and you wanted to poke the kid who told it but he was the Scout Master's son so you just walked off and cursed under your breath. That's not a spoiler. It's not a kitten that ultimately shows up to let loose the horrors---but that would have been better than what does come.

Do you like books that feature a morbidly obese best friend/mentor character, and every scene with that character reads like "You are my friend, but your weight worries me, and I care about you so stop being fat, please." And the friend says "I am glad a fat guy like me can have a friend like you, being as fat as I am---and hey, watch out for my cat, he's fat as well." If so, then this book is for you! Every scene---and it's not just fat characters---reads like judgment, which gets annoying fast.

Do you like books that inexplicably feature the ghost of Elvis, and the only music that people listen to are songs by, you guessed it, Elvis! And you get to learn lots of trivia about the King, because one of the main characters is obsessed with him. Yep. 20 yr. olds listen to Elvis all day, don't they?

And though this has nothing to do with Koontz' writing, it bugs me nonetheless: I don't like the fact that I have to pretend when looking at Koontz' author photo where he sports a thick brown mop of hair that when I read him in the 80s he looked like Dr. Phil. Maybe not that bald, but balder than now, that's for sure. I don't like that I'm supposed to just pretend that this new thick hair is real. The fiction has to stop somewhere, doesn't it? I think so. That just bugs me a little...

I'd write more, but why, really? I may be a bit more harsh than usual, but I just read 2 of these back to back, and am not going to follow Odd to go live in a monastery for the 3rd book, or wherever else he goes in the 4th that's out now. I'm a firm believer in the idea that you have to read the bad with the good in order to appreciate the talent of the writers you love. Koontz isn't a horrible writer, it's just not good, and it's really just not for me. Clearly he's doing ok, and sells books like crazy, so I don't think he'll be worried that I'm not riding in his bandwagon. And honestly, more power to him. This may be somebody's favorite book, and that's great, that's the beauty of books---we don't all have to like the same thing. That said, we're probably much more likely to get along well if this isn't in your top 100.

That's all. Two books. One star.

A: (less) "