Disclaimer: I got this as a gift. It is the second in a series. Reading this book first will spoil the first book in the series, but I can and will avoid spoiling that in this review. Keep that in mind, should someone gift it to you all unknowing.
Odd Thomas is a 21-year-old short order cook who sees dead people. (But, as he'll point out, not talk to them. The dead can't talk.) When his friend Danny is kidnapped and Danny's dad is murdered (guess how Odd finds this out), Odd goes on a solo psychic journey to a destroyed and haunted casino to find his friend and the people who took him. That's a pretty short summary, and indeed, I can't really make it longer without getting into major plot details. The journey to and through the casino probably takes up most of the book, to the point where I thought a little one, two, skip a few might benefit it.
It's an interesting setup in this book. Odd is certainly, well,.... do I even need to say it? He doesn't talk like a 21-year-old, but he's interesting. Quietly snarking, mourning his past, trying to talk ghosts into going to the light, and trying to outwrangle crazy people. I'd probably read more of the series. It seems a little overboard for a kid his age at times, but then again, this one does have unusual circumstances going on.
I do have two fairly major plot quibbles that have to go below the spoiler cut. Otherwise... it's interesting, albeit well, odd. Could be a little more developed or less uh, what I said in the spoiler cut, but not bad. Three and a half stars.
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What is with the deus ex machina in this one? There's two huge, strange ones at the end:
(a) The bad lady is eaten by a mountain lion that Just Happens to show up at the right time, hungry and mad, behind her. Gee, isn't that convenient. Did Odd summon this thing? I didn't think so (or think it was within his abilities), but.... Yeah, that was just weird. If he summoned it, fine, I guess, I just couldn't figure it out for sure. If it's a coincidence, I am annoyed.
(b) At the end, Odd is stabbed, drowns, and dies. His ghost goes to visit his friends one last time. Then he turns up alive... NOT AT THE CASINO, at someone else's house. WHAT. I could buy him being brought back from the dead, but why the hell didn't he just wash up at the casino? How did he magically transport back to town? Odd doesn't even really wonder about this, other folks don't that much, and I was all, WHAT, WHO'S GOT TELEPORTATION NOW? It bugged me.
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