Great read, instructive, exciting, and peaceful.

books:

	• Brother Odd (Odd Thomas Novels) Dean Koontz Bantam, 2007 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 258 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

brother odd by dean koontz

Thanks to amazon I now own most of dean koontz's books. I started collecting and reading them about 5 years ago and I love the edge and mysterious nature of his writing.. great mind.

Excellent, entertaining, hillarious

Brother Odd is better than Forever Odd and nearly as good as Odd Thomas. If you've never read any of the Odd series, start with book one, grit your teeth and exhibit your determination to get through book two, and do not miss Brother Odd. This novel was a joy to read. Koontz's language and style are beautiful and powerful. Wit and humor abound throughout this book. Koontz injects ample terror and suspense here and provides a memorable cast of secondary characters - the lack of which were two major weaknesses of the second novel in the series, Forever Odd. My complaints are minor: the pace and plot slow after a great introduction (but when it picks up again, it's a page-turner until the end) and Odd/the police/the entire monastery seem to overlook an obvious culprit while fortifying and defending. Despite these complaints, I still rate this novel as 5 stars. The story is not perfect, but the writing is so good and reading so enjoyable, that I heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoys suspense, the paranormal, the lingering dead, Elvis, mysterious Russian morticians, wise-guys turned monks, and scientists run amok. Oh, and laughter.

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Love them all

I can't get enough Odd Thomas as I have yet to read one that I could put down. Once I start one there is no putting it down until, sadly, I'm finished with it. Thank you Mr. Koontz for the marvelous stories!!

Great read, instructive, exciting, and peaceful.

I had never read a Dean Koontz novel - may be some thrillers way back, can't recall - but the attractive cover of this one got a hold of me and I bought it. Yes, the monk in the brown robe proved to be irresistible to me. The contents didn't disappoint me.

Brother Odd is one in the "Odd Thomas" novel series, featuring a young man who has suffered untold loss and who is a sage at the tender age of 21, Odd Thomas. In this installment of the series, Thomas' paranormal abilities - he can see dead people as well as a kind of "demon" that congregates in places that are about to witness death in a massive scale, not exactly a happy ability - take him to a Catholic monastery that is also home to an eccentric, world-famous physicist. This physicist, also a monk, has discovered a way to create things and even living beings out of nothing, utilizing a machine that amplifies his thoughts. But, in a plot element reminiscent of the 50's cult-classic SciFi movie, Forbidden Planet, the scientist wasn't counting on "the monsters of the id". Havoc ensues.

This is a breezy, easy read. The characters are simple and uncomplicated, but not shallow. You can read this in a rainy weekend. I do find Odd Thomas, however, a little "odd" in terms of his character and maturity, but maybe that's why he's named "Odd". The monastic life is presented in very general terms - nothing of the "go deep" we find in, for example, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, where the monastic day establishes the pace of the plot, but more as a background for Odd's sleuthing and the scientist's deconstruction. The setup for the monastic characters is positive and respectful, but mostly impressionistic.

Oh, and there's also a "holy dog". Koontz, as you probably know, adored a particular Golden Retriever that had since passed over the rainbow bridge - that means, the doggie is "dead" - and pays homage to him in this and many other of his novels. I truly like how he paints dogs and captures their different moods and reactions.

Elvis and Frank Sinatra also appear - literally. The paranormal appears in right quantities without becoming occultic, or just for effect. In fact, I wonder if this kind of perceptions really exist and if actual people are endowed with them.

Odd Thomas is not religious, but he's somehow "spiritual". Catholicism is in the background but you don't get a real sense that Odd Thomas is Catholic. That's because Koontz " sees the Church as English writer and Roman Catholic convert G.K. Chesterton did. Koontz notes that spirituality has always been part of his books, as are grace and our struggle as fallen souls, but he `never get[s] on a soapbox'. (Source) For us Catholic readers this is a great plus. Koontz is no Dan Brown.

There's another thing that makes me feel an affinity to Koontz and that's his birthplace in Everett, Pennsylvania. That's very close to where I hang my hat in the Laurel Heights of the Alleghenies. It's a personal connection of the geographical sort.

I recommend the book. Great read, instructive, exciting, and peaceful.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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.

From the Hardcover edition.

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