"Odd Hours" by Dean Koontz

The Odd Thomas series is one that holds much value to me for reasons I won't bore anybody with. Needless to say, I was quite surprised to see the newest addition, Odd Hours, sitting idly on a lonely shelf in Wal-Mart. After his religious outing, Odd Thomas set off to let the world carry him somewhere new, and it's in this book that he finds out where, and more importantly, why he was going.

After all these years, it's still evident that Mr. Koontz loves to write, he still has fun with it, which is refreshing. A true master of words, he describes things so well sometimes that it's hard to picture the scenario without the accompaniment of his words. This book contains some material that is under par for Koontz, there are a few cheesy parts, but it seems he did that on purpose, and it can be attributed to the fact that the book is "written" from Odd's point of view.

Though the book is approximately the same length as the others in the series, Odd Hours felt like it read much more quickly than the others. Maybe it's the fact that the action in this book starts and doesn't let up much until the end. Or, perhaps this is because the book is ostensibly more of a segue for the next adventure of Odd, rather than a full Odd Thomas experience. It's not quite a let down, but I feel like Koontz couldn't make up his mind between cataclysm or pit-stop. 

Odd Hours was very dreamscape-esque to me, probably because most of the novel takes place at night, and there is a considerable amount of effort put into describing the fog, and how it interacts with things, in different ways. Koontz did a much better job connecting Odd and his life to our daily world in this book than in the past efforts, which seemed to take place in a different life. By including allusions to a few contemporary people and events and working them into the story successfully, Koontz makes the events in Odd Hours seem even more dire and directly threatening.

If you want to read this book because you've read the others in the series, by all means do. If you want to read this book because it sounds interesting, start back at the beginning with Odd Thomas. I'm not saying this can't be read as a stand-alone book, but it certainly won't be appreciated for what it's worth. On second thought, just go read Odd Thomas. You'll end up at this book anyway. I can only hope that the next book in the series delivers the pent-up apocalypse that this book entices us with.

4/7