2011 Reading Challenge: Book 02

Book Title & Author: Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Published: 2008

 After last week's book, I thought I would finish out the Odd Thomas series with Odd Hours.  My hopes were not high, since the books have steadily been declining in quality - unfortunately, I was right.  This book has very few compelling parts.  The characters were mundane and flat, the plot frail, and the world inconsistent. Thankfully, the writing is still somewhat engaging, though that doesn't nearly make up for the failings.

In the first book (Odd Thomas), Koontz introduced a wide range of characters and fleshed them out as much as was humanly possible.  He even managed to give the dead characters a lot of personality, which is an accomplishment since they aren't able to communicate with anyone.  I remember insignificant people, like the cashier at the gas station (who appeared for less than a page) and the nurse (who appeared for maybe two pages).  Unfortunately, in Odd Hours, you feel forced to like the characters.  Everyone seems to be an unremarkable, one-dimensional stereotype, and no one insignificant appears at all - even Odd acted completely out of character.

Skip this paragraph if you don't want me to spoil the plot for you.  :) Odd needs to stop bad guys from releasing nuclear bombs on four major American cities.  There's a young pregnant woman who is important for some reason (we never find out why), and that's it.  No more plot explanation is necessary.  There's no mystery, except that I still don't know why I was supposed to care about the bombs going off.  Yes, it's wrong to kill millions of innocent people, but we were never even told what cities the bad guys were hoping to destroy.  Odd never even knew.  So we're left wondering... why in the world do I care about this?  Because Odd doesn't know anyone in the cities, neither do we, and so we aren't invested in preventing this disaster.

In addition to these massive failings, Koontz keeps breaking his own rules.  Odd has a ghost dog (animals are never, ever ghosts); a ghost consistently and successfully communicated with him; and in previous books, ghosts were either malevolent or not, a rule which was completely disregarded.  When the author disregards the rules he set for his own universe, you know something's wrong.

The best part about the Odd Thomas series is his view on life: "Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies.  It's a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can" (58).  Koontz likes to poke fun at himself and at the foibles of humanity.  Unfortunately, there are far fewer instances of this here than in previous books.

Sometimes, I think that Koontz is right on about the world:

"When I am battered and oppressed by the world that humanity has made -- which is different from the world that it was given -- my primary defense, my consolation, is the absurdity of that world.


"The given world dazzles with wonder, poetry, and purpose.  The man-made world, on the other hand, is a perverse realm of ego and envy, where power-mad cynics make false idols of themselves and where the meek have no inheritance because they have gladly surrendered it to their idols in return not for lasting glory but for an occasional parade, not for bread but for the promise of bread.

"A species that can blind itself to truth, that can plunge so enthusiastically along roads that lead nowhere but to tragedy, is sometimes amusing in its recklessness, as amusing as the great movie comedians like Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and the many others who knew that a foot stuck in a bucket is funny, that a head stuck in a bucket is funnier, and that trying stubbornly to move a grand piano up a set of stairs obviously too steep and narrow to allow success is the hilarious distillation of the human experience.

"I laugh with humanity, not at it, because I am as big a fool as anyone, and bigger than most.  I style myself as a paladin for both the living and for the lingering dead, but I have been stuck in more than my share of buckets" (119).

God created the world, and it was perfect.  We create things, and unfortunately they break regularly.  It's better to laugh than cry about our imperfections.

And finally, my favorite quote, which speaks for itself: "Those who choose to live criminal lives are not the brightest among us.  This truth inspires a question: If evil geniuses are so rare, why do so many bad people get away with so many crimes against their fellow citizens and, when they become leaders of nations, against humanity?  Edmund Burke provided the answer in 1795: 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'  I would only add this: It is also essential that good men and women not be educated and propagandized into believing that real evil is a myth and that all malevolent behavior is merely the result of a broken family or a failed society's shortcomings, amenable to cure by counseling and by the application of new economic theory" (193).

Don't bother reading this book.  It was good enough that I finished it, hoping it would get better, but it doesn't.  I was interested in reading more Dean Koontz books, but now I wonder if it would just be a waste of time.  The first book (Odd Thomas) was so good that I had high hopes for the rest of the series.  Unfortunately, things just went from bad to worse.

Next week: Disciplines of a Godly Family by Kent and Barbara Hughes