And now I finished Saint Odd and I am so glad to be done with this series. Started out good, but when the author decided to add an over-reaching plot over the whole thing later in the series it just got stupid.
First off, the book ended exactly how I expected it would end. It was a very anti-climatic ending, as well, considering all the build up.
One of my biggest issues was the fact that Odd would act very messed up after he killed someone, sometimes even saying he felt like puking... YET, had no problem shooting people left and right. Even, a few times, shooting people in the back. Of course this is supposed to be all okay because the people he was shooting were
pure evil and one dimensional.
I was reading the
TV Tropes for the series and I felt these were pretty good descriptions of how I felt about the villains in most of these series:
Evil Is Petty: A recurring theme in the series. In almost every book there's a scene of one or more extremely evil characters acting either like petulant children or the dullest bores you ever met.
How about ALL of the evil villains acting this way.
Religion of Evil: Basically every book is Odd having to deal with one of these. The first book is Satanists, the second a psycho woman that has traveled all over the world studying occult stuff, the third is a guy that thinks he can create life, the fifth are a group of people who think they're gods, and the sixth are another (even worse) group of Satanists.
And the fourth, that they don't mention, are domestic terrorists following a former Christian pastor, and the seventh are the same Satanists from the sixth. For some reason this guy has a thing for evil religious stereotypes, or hollywood depictions of religions (Hollywood Satanists, a Hollywood occultist/pagan, ect...).
Another thing that bothered me is not everything is explained. What Anamaria really is. What was with those curb grates with the lightning bolts on them, where he could hear voices and feet through them. Why some animals acted semi-intelligent (but could have been someone with powers controlling them).
One of the good parts of the books was when Odd stays with a pro-gun Texas couple who chastise him for not carrying a gun at all times if people are out to kill him. About time someone talks with common sense. Later, a rather suspenseful scene happens when the Texans house is invaded and Odd runs to save them only to find the Texans kicking the shit out of the bad guys.
And here I go into spoilers about the ending and why it bugged me, because I can't describe why it bugged me unless I spoil it. So..
SPOILERS So, Odd returns to his hometown after seeing a vision of the downtown area flooded with water, and lots of dead people. He hears of the cultists having somehow hijacked a military semi full of C4 (how that would ever happen in the real world I don't know). So he assumes they're gonna blow a damn and flood the town. Near the end of the book the cultists are blowing up shit left and right, a church, a fuel depot, a nut plant. So you think there's gonna be a violent ending to the book.
Nope. Odd figures out the cultists are really going to release a plague virus in the town. He grabs the virus canister, gets into a shootout with one cultist, kills him but is hit, staggers to the police chief, and dies in his arms with the canister. He goes to purgatory and meets his GF. And that's it.
First off, really? All this buildup of C4 and explosions and such and then an anti-climatic ending? I feel ripped off. And while I fully expected Odd to die and be with his girl, and people will say that's a beautiful ending, it seems selfish. I would have more expected Odd to join the league of doo-gooders and use his powet to better the world. Dead, and he's useless. Also, what about the truck of C4? The cultists still have it and it's somewhere being driven away to do another 9/11. The truck is basically ignored for the last part of the book.
Also, I wondered "How did Odd write the last book if he's dead" and then Koontz explains that in the dumbest way. A lighting bolt hits Ozzy's computer and it spits out of the printer. I shit you not. The most convenient way to explain how a dead person writes a story, and the dumbest.
This series started out good. It ended pathetically. I'm pretty disappoint.
