Book Review
God's Child
The Odd Thomas Series
by Dean Koontz
reviewed by Hunter Baker
His name is Odd. Not Todd. Odd. When you look into the origins of his name, they aren't clear. Maybe it was some strange kind of family name. Perhaps it was a mistake on the birth certificate. The young man's parents aren't sure themselves. It is as if the Lord wanted to express the metaphysical truth of this exceptional individual and so arranged to have him legally proclaimed Odd.
Odd is a saint, a short order cook, a man of sorrows, a gentle spirit who sometimes has to be violent, a person in possession of immediate and personal proof of the afterlife, and, therefore, a natural enemy of nihilism because he knows that everything counts. Odd frequently finds himself surrounded by the darkest darkness. It is sometimes literally chilling, but the ultimate effect is to make his goodness shine more brilliantly.
The creator of Odd Thomas is a man who is probably the single best-selling Christian author on the planet. He has sold over 450,000,000 books, a number that grows by an estimated 17,000,000 each year. And his name is not Rick Warren, Jerry Jenkins, or Bruce Wilkinson. Those who pass by the paperback racks on their way through the supermarket line will recognize the name of Dean Koontz. His work has successfully spanned changes in the book business from the time of Waldenbooks, through the era of Barnes and Noble, all the way to Amazon and the oncoming dominance of ebooks. He has been cranking out bestsellers dwelling on the great clash between good and evil for decades.
"But a Christian author?" you ask. Indeed he is. And while he admits to having lapsed as a Catholic in the past, the spiritual depth and urgency of his work only increases with time. With his novel The Taking (2004), one could begin to see that he was an author with explicit Christian concerns. At the outset, The Taking appears to be a story about aliens abducting human beings, but it turns out to be a highly original tale of the Rapture. But if you really want to discover Koontz's Abbey Road when it comes to things of the spirit, you have to get to know Odd.
A Survey of Moral Diseases
Years of major market success gain an author freedom to do what he wants. In the last decade, Koontz has invested his considerable artistic capital in becoming a more intentional instructor of the soul. His device for moral and spiritual teaching is a young man named Odd. Odd, like Koontz, is a Catholic. He is bright, handsome, and athletic. His parents are divorced and both highly dysfunctional. Odd's inattentive, playboy father comes from a family with a lot of money. His mother doesn't deserve the name. Given his upbringing, Odd is a miracle. He is God's child more than he is the child of two people who refuse to grow up.
Odd's decision to live simply (he sometimes dreams of moving from the diner to selling tires) is a response to necessity. He sees the dead who have not moved on. In an interesting twist, he also sees entities he calls bodachs. They, like the dead, lack substance and appear as looming shadows in places where great tragedies are about to occur. Odd's grim conjecture about the reason for their appearance speaks to the nature of sin and the development of a broader and deeper crisis in human affairs. He suspects they are time travelers from a future so desperately wicked that its denizens hope to be spectators to bloody spectacles.
Odd's ability to perceive what the rest of us cannot has a tendency to draw him into dangerous situations dominated by depraved villains. As a result, he cannot accumulate material things or set up anything approaching an ordinary life. Just as he feels a responsibility to intervene in unfolding tragedies, the perpetrators of evil acts seem drawn to him.
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Hunter Baker , J.D., Ph.D., is the dean of arts and sciences at Union University, a fellow of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and an affiliate scholar of the Acton Institute.
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