My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I generally don’t like committing to a series but Odd Thomas is the kind I like. No epic story spanning ten 1,000 page tomes, just a series of short adventures featuring the same character that can be digested easily without consulting appendices to keep track of everything.
I would give Forever Odd 3.5 stars if Goodreads believed in fractions and the only reason it doesn’t rate higher is because it is an overall less ambitious outing with Odd Thomas that strips away much of the mystery and suspense of the debut novel in favor of a kidnapping orchestrated by a crazy and unpleasant woman. It’s interesting but not as rich or compelling.
The strength of the story is again the way Koontz utterly inhabits the character of Odd, taking full advantage of the first person narrative to take us on Odd’s journey into a gutted casino hotel in the desert where he confronts both the kidnappers and the tragic events of the first novel, emerging broken but not beaten (and conveniently setting up the third novel).
The plot is nothing special, starting with a kidnapping, an unnecessary murder (Koontz’s recurring theme in the series seems to be “life is awful and tragic and you will probably die horribly”) and quickly settles into an extended set piece that pits Odd against the villains. The villains are by turns vile, obnoxious, cruel and at times seemingly indestructible. Odd relies on a combination of skill, supernatural smarts and plain luck to get through.
While the book is short I wouldn’t exactly call it breezy. As with the first, Odd’s self-deprecating humor is regularly undercut by terrible events. Somehow Koontz manages to keep things light and dark at the same time–a good trick when you think about it.
Forever Odd is, then, a successful continuation of the series, even if it is somewhat slighter than the original.
