Brother Odd (Odd Thomas Novels)

Brother Odd (Odd Thomas Novels)
By Dean Koontz


Product Description
Loop me in, odd one. The words, spoken in the deep of night by a sleeping child, chill
the young man watching over her. For this was a favorite phrase of Stormy Llewellyn,
his lost love, and Stormy is dead, gone forever from this world. In the haunted halls of
the isolated monastery where he had sought peace, Odd Thomas is stalking spirits of an infinitely darker nature

Through two New York Times bestselling novels Odd Thomas has established himself as one of the most beloved and unique fictional heroes of our time. Now, wielding all the power and magic of a master storyteller at the pinnacle of his craft, Dean Koontz follows Odd into a singular new world where he hopes to make a fresh beginning—but where he will meet an adversary as old and inexorable as time itself.

St. Bartholomew’s Abbey sits in majestic solitude amid the wild peaks of California’s high Sierra, a haven for children otherwise abandoned, and a sanctuary for those seeking insight. Odd Thomas has come here to learn to live fully again, and among the eccentric monks, their other guests, and the nuns and young students of the attached convent school, he has begun to find his way. The silent spirits of the dead who visited him in his earlier life are mercifully absent, save for the bell-ringing Brother Constantine and Odd’s steady companion, the King of Rock 'n' Roll.

But trouble has a way of finding Odd Thomas, and it slinks back onto his path in the form of the sinister bodachs he has met previously, the black shades who herald death and disaster, and who come late one December night to hover above the abbey’s most precious charges. For Odd is about to face an enemy who eclipses any he has yet encountered, as he embarks on a journey of mystery, wonder, and sheer suspense that surpasses all that has come before.





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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #7510 in Books
Published on: 2006-11-28
Released on: 2006-11-28
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
384 pages

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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Koontz's third Odd Thomas novel (after Forever Odd) offers an irresistibly offbeat mix of supernatural horror and laugh-out-loud humor. A resident of St. Bartholomew's Abbey, a monastery in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Thomas has the ability to see the spirits of the dead, a gift he has used to resolve mysteries and prevent future tragedies. As the story opens, the seer is unsettled by visions of bodachs, sinister ghostlike entities whose appearance precedes some dire tragedy. Thomas frantically searches for some sign that will help him head off disaster, even as St. Bart's is thrown into turmoil by the disappearance of one of its members. Thomas must figure out both the identity of the person or being behind the terror and the most effective way to restore peace to his haven. While newcomers may find the villain's underlying motive a bit over the top, the narrator's engaging voice should continue to give this series cross-genre appeal. (Nov. 28)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
After three novels featuring the aptly named Odd Thomas, it's clear Dean Koontz has a winner. I like Odd Thomas! I want to read more about him, especially after the teasing ending of his latest and greatest adventure, BROTHER ODD. Actor David Aaron Baker has performed all three "Odd" novels, and it's hard to imagine anyone else doing the fourth. Baker captures the gentleness of Odd; the benevolent sadness of his brilliant 400-pound friend, Oswald; and the confident and godly monks with whom Odd sought refuge after his girlfriend was murdered. The peculiar young man, whose mother meant to name him "Todd," sees demons called "bodocks," which swarm in places where death and destruction are imminent. It's up to Odd to figure out the impending danger and stop it. M.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
The third adventure of Odd Thomas, the boy (well, he's 21, but still . . .) who sees ghosts, has a lighter feel to it than the gruelingly suspenseful Forever Odd(2005) and the funny and moving Odd Thomas (2003). It's reminiscent of a sunny monster-movie sequel--say, Son of Frankenstein--in which stock characters do their shtick with a wink and a nod: "Dontcha just love us?" In this case, yes, we do. Odd has retreated to a monastery in the Sierra Nevadas that permanently hosts a billionaire physicist in an underground lab. The mogul has given his entire fortune to support the monastery and attached convent in their work of housing and educating severely damaged children, the most interesting of which is now a 25-year-old artistic savant. As the story opens, bodachs--animated shadows that gather in anticipation of lethal violence, which only Odd among the living sees--are invading the children's quarters. Can Odd mitigate the coming cataclysm? Of course he can, despite the arrival of murderous bone creatures and grim Death itself, for the monks include quite a contingent of reformed martial sinners, most memorably Brother Knuckles, formerly of the New Jersey Mob, and another guest, a mysterious Russian librarian from Indianapolis, who is more and different than Odd thinks he is. Koontz salts Odd's narration with some wonderful zingers at the expense of cultural degeneracy and political folly. A darned good time should be had by all readers. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


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Customer Reviews
Odd is more Preaching than Thrilling
I have been reading Dean Koontz strories for more than 25 years. He has a fun escapist thriller style that I have always liked. However the last ten years or so he has become a right wing nut and some kind of born again nut. If he had these beliefs before he never let them enter his stories yet over the last 10 years he lets them become a main part of them.

Like most very smart people he uses all his brains and skills to try to convince us that a square peg really does fit into a round hole. For those that have his kind of beliefs they might like hearing bunk as if it rational yet for those of us that don't it becomes an insult to his otherwise fans.

The reader is very good for this series. Mr. Koontz still has a fun writing style, has a fun imagination, and knows how to get you to care for his characters yet he seems to be writing more and more for the infintile mind instead of the grown up one.

Why do I still read him... Because I have been a fan for so long that I keep hoping he'll go back to story and forget the preaching. Because sometimes he is a quick escapiest read. Because I like his imagination. However I have been reading less and less of him and this might be my last.

Great Read!!!
Odd Thomas proves to be a great creation by Mr. Koontz. I have to admit I was a little disappointed in Forever Odd and I had some reservations about this third installment. However, I was greatly surprised. Good book and great action and suspense by, IMO, a literary giant. You wont be disappointed if you read this one.

A great addition to the series
This book makes a great addition to Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series. If you have read and enjoyed the first two books, Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas) and Forever Odd (Forever Odd), you will definitely enjoy this book. It is not as great as the first book, but it is definitely better than the second. If you have not read any of the other books in the series, you would still be able to read this one and understand it, but I recommend reading the original Odd Thomas before reading this because Odd Thomas is the best of the series and there are many references back to it in this book.

Odd Thomas has the gift, or curse (depending on how you look at it), of being able to see spirits of the dead that have not yet moved on from this world. He can also see dark spirits, called bodachs, that signal when a disastrous event is eminent. He has used this gift, along with other skills like psychic magnetism, to save lives of people in the past.

In this book, Odd has retreated to a monastery in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to try to get away from things for awhile. Everything is going good, until one night, the first bodach appears to signal that something bad is bound to happen in the near future.

The reason that I have enjoyed the Odd Thomas series so much is that the books are written from the first person. Koontz has made it as if Odd Thomas himself wrote these stories. This makes it much easier to get sucked into the stories and feel as if you are actually there. Also, these stories are supposed to be suspense, but there a lot of elements in these stories that Koontz has purposefully made comical. One element is the spirit of Elvis Presley that has shown up in each story. Odd is trying to help Elvis transition from the spirit world to eternal peace. You can be assured that when Elvis shows up, you will laugh.

Koontz used an element in this novel that has made the imagery much easier to imagine. He has used numerous popular culture movies to compare events and people in this movie. The one that stuck out the most to me was when he likened the hard working nuns to Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

I would highly recommend reading Brother Odd as well as the other books in the Odd series. Like with most other Dean Koontz novels, once you get into the story, you will not want to stop until it is done.

The end of this book has left the story open for another sequel, and I can't wait till Koontz releases it.