This should probably go on Goodreads, but I'm too ashamed to show my face there
Finished the final book in the Odd Thomas series last night. I skipped the last two books in the series, didn't read the graphic novels or the novella, but Saint Odd had a little blurb on the front about it being the thrilling conclusion to Odd's journey, so I had to pick it up.
I like Odd well enough, but have always felt the other characters who populate his world are too cute by half, and that didn't change in this final chapter. Lauren and the two cops guarding the dam are the only people he meets who seem real. I never warmed up to Annamaria, and while I like the idea of Edie's group out there as a counterpoint to all the evil in the world, she and her people just seem without any real weight or substance.
I'm trying to think if any other Dean Koontz books have ended with the death of his protagonist and I'm coming up blank, so maybe that's one reason it's not quite sitting right with me. As dark as the subject matter of so many of his tales, Koontz tends to end his books on a hopeful note. Having Odd die wasn't necessarily the wrong way to end the series -- part of me even feels it is fitting to be honest -- but something about the way it happens doesn't quite sit right. Being shot in the process of saving Pico Mundo (and potentially much of the American Southwest?) is certainly a heroic way to go, but for the shooter to be an anonymous, faceless bad guy? and it's such a mundane way to die (being shot, that is), given all the supernatural elements that have permeated these books to this point. There was also no sense of Odd passing on the torch to anyone. I wish Lou had survived, so we might have had some sense that he and perhaps other carnies were going to join the fight, having been exposed to the truth. We know that Edie and Annamarie and Tim and Blossom remain, and surely Edie and Annamarie will continue the good fight, but it just feels like the side of good and light lost a key piece on its board, and the side of dark hasn't thrown in the towel or been entirely beaten back.
And did I miss it, or did we actually get a final Odd Thomas book without a single appearance by the bodachs?
All that said and although I'm ambivalent about the suggestion that there's another battle to be waged on the other side, I'm glad he eventually made it to Stormy. Seeing her again and being with her motivated him through so much, the thought of them being reunited, finally, is the part of the story's ending that I think I will just have to most focus on.
Now to finally start The 100 series!
I like Odd well enough, but have always felt the other characters who populate his world are too cute by half, and that didn't change in this final chapter. Lauren and the two cops guarding the dam are the only people he meets who seem real. I never warmed up to Annamaria, and while I like the idea of Edie's group out there as a counterpoint to all the evil in the world, she and her people just seem without any real weight or substance.
I'm trying to think if any other Dean Koontz books have ended with the death of his protagonist and I'm coming up blank, so maybe that's one reason it's not quite sitting right with me. As dark as the subject matter of so many of his tales, Koontz tends to end his books on a hopeful note. Having Odd die wasn't necessarily the wrong way to end the series -- part of me even feels it is fitting to be honest -- but something about the way it happens doesn't quite sit right. Being shot in the process of saving Pico Mundo (and potentially much of the American Southwest?) is certainly a heroic way to go, but for the shooter to be an anonymous, faceless bad guy? and it's such a mundane way to die (being shot, that is), given all the supernatural elements that have permeated these books to this point. There was also no sense of Odd passing on the torch to anyone. I wish Lou had survived, so we might have had some sense that he and perhaps other carnies were going to join the fight, having been exposed to the truth. We know that Edie and Annamarie and Tim and Blossom remain, and surely Edie and Annamarie will continue the good fight, but it just feels like the side of good and light lost a key piece on its board, and the side of dark hasn't thrown in the towel or been entirely beaten back.
And did I miss it, or did we actually get a final Odd Thomas book without a single appearance by the bodachs?
All that said and although I'm ambivalent about the suggestion that there's another battle to be waged on the other side, I'm glad he eventually made it to Stormy. Seeing her again and being with her motivated him through so much, the thought of them being reunited, finally, is the part of the story's ending that I think I will just have to most focus on.
Now to finally start The 100 series!