[Book review] Power of Hesitation - 'Forever Odd' by Dean Koontz

This is a book review of Forever Odd by Dean Koontz, the second book in the Odd series. You can read my book review of the first one Odd Thomas here.

[Book review] There Will be Murders. Can You Risk Your Life to Save People? - 'Odd Thomas' by Dean Koontz

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Are human beings good or evil by nature? Is this world good or evil place to live? If we were to get rid of all the bad people on earth, will this world be a better place? Or some portion of the remained good people will turn into bad people? Do bad people always deserve to die? These are some of the questions that poped up in my mind while reading this book. It looks like I've met a very good book: It was fun to read and asked me those philosophical questions.

Source: Goodread

The main character Odd Thomas can see dead people. Other that that, he also has another ability that's called 'psychic magnetism' in this book. It means if he goes wandering around while thinking about someone or something, then he'll be pulled toward them just like metal is pulled toward magnet. This ability came in handy in this book.

One day Odd woke up in the middle of the night and saw that his friend's father was in his own room. His friend's father was not rude enough to visit him at night without calling him first, nor to break into his room without ringing the bell. That's right. His friend's father was dead - hence Odd could see him. He still looked disoriented and didn't seem to know why he was in his son's friend's house. Since Odd could only see but not listen to ghosts, Odd had to figure out what happened by himself. His friend was suffering from rare illness, which could break his bones even with mild ordinary touches. And he appeared to be left alone with the killer of his father at his home. Now Odd dashed to the friend's house through the cold dawn air to save his friend, leaving the confused father ghost in his room.

This book's genre is suspense, but from time to time it almost looked like a philosophy book, at least to me. It asked many questions about friendship, good and evil, human nature, etc. I think that's the power of Koontz. He can even make a philosophy book out of a suspense novel.

Among many things to ponder upon, I'd like to focus on one part of this book that made me think hard for several days afterwards.

Imagine this. You and a killer are in the same building. The killer's chasing you with a gun. But he doesn't know that you have a gun, too. When you're at the top of the stairwell, you hear his footsteps, ascending from lower floors. He doesn't know that you're waiting at the top of the stairs. This is a quite confined stairwell, so even if you are not familiar with guns you cannot fail to shoot him and give him fatal wounds, if not immediate death. What would you do?

That was a gloomy situation. Let's try something else. You and an evil killer are facing each other, about 12 feet apart. Unfortunately, she has a gun, and you don't. While she's threatening your life with that gun, you just wish it would be a quick death without much pain. Then suddenly, a big mountain lion appears from her behind without her knowing it. It looks like it's about to attack her before the bullet from her gun travels toward you. What would you do?

Both of the questions seem very simple, don't they? You would just shoot him in the first case because attack is the best defense. And as for the second case, you would run away while the mountain lion is about to pounce upon her. But in this book 'Forever Odd', our hero Odd acted differently, suiting his name.

In the first case, instead of shooting the killer, he ran away, because "Necessity had driven me to take the weapon, but I wasn't keen to use it. The gun would be a last resort, not a first option" as he put it. And in the second case, even though he believed that the bad woman "deserved to be imprisoned" or "execution", and he "had the right – the obligation – to kill her" to save himself and his friend, he hesitated before turning his back on her when the mountain lion approached its prey. Because he also believed that "no one deserves as hideous a death as being mauled and eaten alive by a wild beast" and "regardless of the circumstances, perhaps it is indefensible to allow such a fate to unfold to the point of inevitability when the potential victim, armed with a gun, could save herself if warned."

The first thing I thought about his action (or rather inaction) was "What are you doing? Shoot him. Kill him before he kills you." "Flee while the mountain lion's having his dinner. Run away before it considers you as a dessert. Let the bad people die. Give us readers some catharsis. Show us some justice served!"

But the next thing that came to my mind was that I must have watched too many Hollywood movies. Killing someone, taking a man's life at your own hands would not be an easy thing to do. Even if he's a bad man.

What makes a human human?
Odd Thomas asks you, "Is it acceptable to kill a man just because he's evil?"
Even if he's a very, very, very bad man, he's still a man. A person. A human being, no matter how inhuman he might be. Can you kill a person? Can you let a man eaten alive by a mountain lion? I don't know. Probably I'll hesitate, too. But then again, maybe I'm only saying this because I'm sitting on a sofa in a safe house without any evil man armed with a gun. But Odd, he hesitated to shoot at the top of the stairs. He just fled. He hesitated to turn his back to the woman with a gun before running for his life. That’s something.

I think good books give you some answers, solutions, and perspective. And fine books give you some questions to ponder upon. Now it's my turn to find some answers to them.