Brother Odd By Dean Koontz

Okay, I admit it. I'm a Koontz fanatic. I can always rely on his novels for a fast read. I work so hard at my day job that when I climb into bed with a book, I don't want to have to think. I want to easily comprehend every word. I want the sentences to be short enough that I don't get lost in my half-asleep stupor. I want action that will keep me riveted so that I have the motivation to turn the page. On that level, Koontz always delivers.

However, Brother Odd was not up there with my favorite books. This one bordered on being corny. The story is narrated by the main character, Odd Thomas, who has a quirky sense of humor. Don't get me wrong -- I love humor, but his humor was a bit difficult to believe as he was always cracking jokes when his life was in danger. Obviously, with horror novels, you do have to suspend disbelief, but all those silly jokes brought me back to the state of mind that I was reading a novel, as opposed to being immersed in a story as one of the characters myself.

Odd Thomas, a fry cook with a special power to tap into other worlds, is a guest at a monastery in the high Sierra of California. The adventure begins when he spots a shadowy bodach slinking through the woods outside his window. Knowing that bodachs only appear when death is imminent, Odd must set out to solve the mystery of who will die, how and when.

Odd Thomas is a character in many Dean Koontz novels, and I've enjoyed following his adventures throughout the series. I admit to not reading them in the order of how they were written, but fortunately Koontz took that into consideration while writing each novel, so newcomers are not left out in the cold. Speaking of cold, there is a lot of snow in this novel, so you might want to read it in the summer months.