Odd Hours: Blecchh!

A few years ago, my mother-in-law (not literally, as I am not legally permitted to be married to my partner) lent me her copy of Dean Koontz’s novel Odd Thomas. A strange and charming and mildly funny tale of a young man with the ability to see and interact with ghosts and to clairvoyantly head off danger and death, this story concluded with such a stunning and unexpected and deeply heartbreaking revelation that I literally gasped and was left weeping. This, I thought, was the work of a really great storyteller. And I still think so. But it’s too bad that this storyteller went to the well too many times and produced the fourth Odd Thomas book, Odd Hours.

Yeah, it’s the frequent trouble with sequels. A lot of great stories through the ages never got a sequel because they were either not commercially successful enough to warrant it or they predated the era of people thinking that stuff needs sequels. Or the story was just done and it would be plain dumb to add a part two. Once in a while, something is really good and it ought to just be left alone with no sequels or derivatives. But that’s thinking from a day long forgotten by people who make decisions on such things.

The second Odd Thomas story, Forever Odd, was OK. It wasn’t nearly as good as the original, but it offered the reader the satisfaction of seeing this character in action again, and it was decently entertaining. It, too, ended with a surprise, though one that was much less surprising than the ending to the first story. Then we get to the third book, Brother Odd. This one I listened to by way of an audio book from the library while at work and in the car. The main thing I remember about it is being left with the impression that the author had a lot to say about current-eventsy Fox Newsy shit like “Islamo-fascists,” and that the reader is presumed to be in sympathy with the ideology of the Catholic church, and that the Christian conception of an afterlife is more or less “fact.” It reminded me in a very unpleasant way of Orson Scott Card’s embarrassingly bad novel Empire, in which he promulgates his neo-con nonsense throughout and even gives uber-douche Bill O’Reilly a cameo.

Which brings me at last to the subject of this post: Odd Thomas IV: Odd Hours. OMG. WTF? This is a serious disappointment. It’s Orson-Scott-Card-Empire-bad, that’s how bad it is. Here, just watch the trailer and skip the book. The trailer is actually much, much better than the book, and considerably shorter, too. I have two primary gripes with it:

1) It’s too current-eventsy in a very watching-TV-now kind of way. Though I have a generally dim view of human affairs, I refuse to believe that “fascist jihadists” and “Venezuela” and other phrases and boogeymen from Fox News talking points are going to sound current and relevant in a few years, and that makes this story possibly irrelevant and even ahistorical to readers years from now. Koontz describes a fog-enshrouded tree as robed and bearded and turbaned. The acme of evil is always something emanating from the Evilsphere as defined by the Republican Party. Big Gubberment, Terrorists, Pinkos, it’s all out there. Koontz even refers to the goddamned Transformers movie. Did no one edit this book at all? That movie has already been forgotten! And the sequel was just released recently.

2) Odd Thomas himself is kind of a douchebag. This pains me to say, because I loved him in the first book and liked him quite well in the second, and even hung on to a lot of sympathy for him in the third. But now, on the fourth go-around, I’m quite done with his perfect virtue and unalloyed heroism. The other day I read an interview with Terry Goodkind (a Big Name fantasist whom I’ve sadly never read) in which he cited as favorite authors Ayn Rand (don’t even get me started) and Dean Koontz. His reason for liking Koontz is that he is supposedly one of the few contemporary writers who (along with Goodkind) creates characters that are heroes just because they deserve to be heroes and are just really perfect and swell. Well, you know what? That’s not interesting. This Odd dude has no flaws at all, he is pristine in his morals and his intentions, and he never makes a mistake outside of occasional clumsiness. He’s a fucking angel on Earth. He is a cartoon, not a human being. Also, Koontz uses the character as a vehicle to advance a tiresome romantic/condescending case that blue-collar people have some kind of idyllic lives that everyone (rich people, like Koontz) should aspire to. Odd Thomas is a “fry cook” by trade. He has considered dropping that line of work to try out the supposedly even less demanding “tire life,” selling tires at a tire shop where he has friends. He has considered saying fuck all to the stresses of the world and becoming a shoe salesman. Well, here’s some news for Dean Koontz and any non-blue-collar people reading this post:

1) No one in the restaurant business even calls himself a “fry cook” much less bandies that title about as a source of pride. As someone who has held every job in that industry from part-time dishwasher to high-profile executive chef to restaurant owner, I can tell you that these jobs are serious work and far more arduous than any sitting-at-a-desk-in-a-button-down-shirt job and that they are in no way near as idyllic as is portrayed in this story, and thank you very much for making the “fry cook” into the equivalent of the romantic savage in an old cowboys-and-Indians movie;

2) People who work in retail sales in general, whether it’s in the “tire life” or selling shoes, pretty much dream daily of slitting the throats of their customers and would probably do so in a second if they could get away with it. Selling shit to rude-ass douchebags for poverty wages and no health insurance (not even gubberment-run so-shuh-LIST insurance) is a life of leisure and contentment? Is that what Koontz is saying? Was he always a bestselling novelist and never needed to work an actual job? Sounds like it. Next time you are buying tires or shoes or ordering a sickening toadburger or some roach McNuggets at McDonald’s, just remember that the person serving you would probably be delighted to see you burning atop a stack of corpses. Though being a reasonable human and behaving with common courtesy dispels those fantasies quickly. Just saying.

So, in conclusion: Odd Hours is barely readable and its author isn’t living in the same world that I am. Not recommended. He ought not write a fifth one.