Excellent! I thought a character that could see dead people was a little played out at this point. However, this story was a whole new twist on the idea with plenty of surprises. Dean Koontz does an excellent job of making the characters real to the reader. I can't wait to read the rest of the series!

I am not a big reader, but my wife likes Dean Koontz - most of the time.

She told me this is one of his better books, and recommends it to anyone that likes just a good story and/or Koontz' work.

Dean Koontz has had a long and lucrative career as one of the most prolific writers in the modern world. He is second only to Stephen King as the most well-known and best-loved author of supernatural tales--and the day may not be too far off when he surpasses even King, now that the best-selling monarch of horror is said to be retiring from public writing. In any case, Dean Koontz has a vast and loyal following all his own, and it is mostly deserved.

In Odd Thomas, Koontz continues in his recent trend of the past five years or so, writing primarily about a character rather than about an event or an idea. In blockbusters of years past like The Watchers and The Bad Place, Koontz cloaked a socio-political issue like cloning or judicial incompetence in the guise of a fast-paced story. Other years brought less thoughtful but more enjoyable and far simpler thrillers like Intensity and Tick Tock, non-stop breath-catchers that leave readers up till three in the morning looking warily around corners and out of curtained windows. Odd Thomas is a different kind of book, a character novel that explores the depth of the human spirit and encourages readers to take their time and savor every page rather than speed ahead to the end so they can finally get some sleep.

Odd Thomas, the novel's protagonist who is neither as young nor as sympathy evoking as Haley Joel Osmont's character in The Sixth Sense, sees dead people. Odd is his name, not merely a description, though it works equally well as both for this particular person. Ever since he was a child, he has had the dubious "gift" of seeing every ghost that crosses his path. In the small California town of Pico Mundo, the dead never talk, but they do hang around after life is over, and they are all visible to Odd. They also communicate with him, albeit not verbally. They give him clues to help solve the crimes surrounding their deaths. They play jokes, like the ghost of Elvis, who moves things around Odd's apartment at night for reasons known only to the (not-so) departed King. And Odd accepts this, though he's not always thrilled about it.

He is thrilled about the rest of his life, however. He works as a short-order-chef at the local grill, and though he acknowledges that this might not be his final career (he has some vague plans to perhaps work at the local tire merchant someday), he loves his job. And he loves his girlfriend, Stormy, whom he considers the most beautiful girl in the world. He's less happy about the mysterious and unquestionably evil bodachs, dark spirits from another world that show up whenever some horrible evil is about to take place. Odd is a strange guy in a strange world, mostly happy, occasionally sad, rarely frightened, but often contemplative about his strange gift and the life it forces him to lead.

It is this strange life that Dean Koontz explores for the four hundred or so pages of this book. The story follows Odd through several action-packed days of his life, centering around the intrusion into his mostly peaceful existance of a man so evil that he attracts dark spirits like some kind of satanic Pied Piper. As Odd attempts to discern and then prevent the coming horrific event that has brought evil to his town, we learn about Odd himself and, through him, about Koontz's view of human nature.

The narrative is in the first person, a device Koontz has used in the past with a great deal of success. The prose is characteristically flowery, overly so in places, as if the author is trying too hard to be considered literary. Consider as an example the following: "The prickeld skin on my arms suggested that I should speak in a honk, have webbed feet, and be covered with feathers." Translation: I was rather nervous. Or another: "Although his eyes lacked elliptical pupils, they reminded me of the eyes of a snake, keen with venomous intent, and though his bared teeth included no hooked or dramatically elongat

This was the first novel by Koontz that I've read--but I can assure you it won't be the last. I enjoyed the heck out of this novel. What a terrific ending; I never saw that coming (I won't spoil it for the rest of you reading this). I can hardly wait to start Forever Odd. If you've never read this novel, do yourself a favor and pick this one up and have fun. It will keep you up late at night.

My son says this is a great book. He liked it very much.