Brother Odd

Jen, Cameron and I made a trip to borders right after Christmas. With the in store discount and Jen's borders rewards we managed to pick up 'Brother Odd' for a little over eight dollars. We used the remainder of a gift card to purches it, so in reality we got the $28.00 book for free. Which was nice.

It is the third installment of the Odd Thomas books by Dean Koontz. The first book Odd Thomas was a really good book. I thought it had a good plot, and was rather well written. The second book was also a good read, though a little strange. All in all the idea wasn't to far fetched. At least as far as a person that can see dead people is concerned. After all, while he could see the dead, there wasn't anything overly supernatural about it. He just stopped the bad guys.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read the book and are planning on it, don't read the next few paragraphs.

This book was a good read, but I think that it was rather predictable. And disappointing in cretin spots. By the third chapter I had the 'bad guy' narrowed down to one of two people. The scientist and the Russian. By the middle of the book I knew that the scientist did it.

The Russian was a bit a puzzle for me, one that ended bad I think. By the middle of the book you realize that the Russian isn't what he claims to be. From the way the book was heading I thought perhaps he was another person like Odd, with the ability to see dead people. Or at the least he would turn out to be horribly evil. Neither is the case. He is in fact a NSA agent. I mean, really, an NSA agent in the middle of a monastery on the side of a mountain.

As for the 'bad guy'. He turns out to be a mad scientist. Jeckle and Hyde type. He is a monk, and devoted to God, and to proving his existence. In his studies he makes a machine that can produce matter based on thought. Unfortuity he has a 'evil side' that uses this machine to produce evil skeletons and a 'death' figure that tries to kill of the scientist retarded son.

The ending was anti-climatic. It all ended with two bullets from the NSA agent.

END SPOILER

All in all it was a good read, and I glad we picked it up. It eludes to another Odd Thomas adventure at the end. I would recommend it to anybody that is a Koontz fan.