Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

Forever Odd is the second in a series of novels centred around the character Odd Thomas, a young man with the ability to see what he calls “the lingering dead” – spirits of dead people who, for one reason or another, have unfinished business before moving on. It’s far from an original notion, of course, but that didn’t stop me devouring the first and second novels quickly, and anticipating the third.

I’m probably repeating what I said in my review of the first book, but Forever Odd is a great read because of its titular character, a sensitive, eccentric, deep thinking young man, dealing with a supernatural gift that has the habit of doubling as a curse.

Forever Odd begins several months after the traumatic climax of the first novel. We see Odd voluntarily unemployed, living alone in an apartment, trying to put the pieces of his psyche back together. Suddenly he is visited by a new ghost, the father of one of his friends – a man who should be vey much alive. Odd quickly visits the man’s house, only to discover that his friend has been kidnapped, and his friend’s father murdered. And so, Odd sets off in hot pursuit, his gift giving him an edge over anything the police might do.

In one sense, the novel is typical formulaic Koontz, and just when I’m inclined to view the author as a bit of a hack, he goes and surprises me with a nugget of wisdom among the pages, elevating the book to more than just the literary equivalent of a dumb action movie. Koontz, in his podcast, said the novel is about “the redemptive nature of unearned suffering.” That’s a tad pretentious, but credit where credit’s due: Koontz does inject a few good insights about life into the prose.

All things considered, the Forever Odd makes a pretty good thriller, and it has a tendency to surprise the reader (as did the first novel).

A worthy sequel. Looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into Brother Odd sometime. And I’ve heard Koontz is intending to write yet more Odd Thomas books.

Rising Stars: Voices of the Dead; Bright by Fiona Avery

The artwork in this graphic novel was so beautiful that it called to me from the library shelf. I had never heard of the Rising Stars, mythology but it seems that each tale works in a standalone fashion. The two in this volume are concerned with two different characters. The common thread that unites the whole series is that each protagonist is a “Special.” Here’s what that means (from the back cover):

In the sixties, a fireball struck Pederson, Illinois granting all the children who were in utero at the time fantastic powers – 113 in all. Dubbed “Specials,” these children grew into adulthood cloistered together, forming rivalries, friendships and enmities. Some became heroes, some criminals, and others simply lived out an ordinary existence. After years of petty fights, squabbles and grabs for power, a new unifying mission became clear, a purpose for their existence that they had all been unable to see before … to change the world.

Somebody’s been watching The 4400 methinks. Well, I decided to disgregard the unoriginal concept, since the superhero genre offers plenty of scope for diversity of superpowers. Unfortunately, the two stories aren’t terribly original in that regard, either.

Voices of the Dead is about a man called Lionel Zerb whose power is an ability to see ghosts. Lionel’s obsession is to discover whether there really is an afterlife. You’d think that fact would be obvious to someone like Lionel, but unfortunately it’s not strictly true that he sees actual ghosts. He sees “afterimages” of a person. So, he goes from ghost hunt to ghost hunt, hoping one day to find “the real thing.” It all gets ultra weird after a while, and I found myself a bit confused by the end of it all.

Bright is the shorter (and better) of the two stories in the volume. This one is about a Special, Matthew Bright, who takes on a false identity in order to pursue his dream of being a police officer (a position of responsibility that a Special would not be permitted to fulfill; think X-Men and all the fear of “mutants”). Right in the middle of an important case, his identity is compromised, and things get sticky. The ending of the story involves Bright getting a “costume” as a gift. This is the only point where the story got a little silly.

It’s an above average read, but there are certainly better graphic novels out there. I’ll heap plenty of praise on the artwork, but not so much on the writing.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

This short novel chronicles an adventure in the life of a sea-faring drifter called Marlow around 1900. Most of the action takes place aboard a steamboat travelling up the Congo river. Marlow’s destination is deep into the jungle, to the farthest point any white man has travelled. His aim, to find and retrieve an Englishman called Kurtz. Along the way, Marlow learns a great deal about Kurtz, through people at the various stations along the river. It seems Kurtz has set himself up as a feared leader among the natives.

I’m conscious of the fact that I’m not making this book sound very interesting. If anything, the plot itself is fairly uncomplicated and run-of-the-mill. But the strength of the story lies in the way that Conrad describes what his characters go through. You might expect Marlow to marvel at the beauty of the jungle, but what happens is quite the opposite. The jungle is described as a terrifying place, almost prehistoric in nature. What Marlow experiences most of all is the fear of leaving civilisation so far behind. And when we finally meet Kurtz, we don’t find an Englishman who has brought civilisation to the uncivilised, but a man who has abandoned civilisation, seduced by the anarchy around him. The author himself was a mariner, and I get the feeling that some of what he’s writing is autobiographical.

I found this to be a difficult novel to understand fully. Other reviews have described it as dealing with moral struggles. I felt the story was much too vague in that respect. The novel is also difficult to read because of the way paragraphing has been handled. At one point, a single paragraph ran across three full book pages. Why? Well, the story is written from the point of view of Marlow, aboard a boat on the Thames, narrating his adventure to his shipmates. The entire story is written as one large quotation. I’ve seen this done very well, such as Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne. But Conrad seems to feel this this format won’t allow him to space his paragraphs out in normal fashion. For instance, when two people are speaking together, Conrad rarely if ever takes a new paragraph each time the conversation switches between persons. Instead, quotes are sandwiched together, one after another, along the same paragraph.

I got some enjoyment out of this novel, but as I was reading it, I found myself being glad that it was so tiny (under 100 pages). With prose that was this awkward to read, I couldn’t have faced a longer book.