BuzzSugar has posted their spring list of Books To Read Before They're Movies. Most of these film adaptations have already been extensively covered here and elsewhere, but I was excited to discover that someone is making a movie version of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas. Apparently it will star Anton Yelchin (who I thought was charming as the infant version of Chekov in the latest Star Trek movie), so I'm pretty stoked. I've always enjoyed Koontz's storytelling abilities, but I've never been impressed by his actual writing, so I'm hoping I'll enjoy the film adaptation without unfavorably comparing it to its source material.

Labels: Dean Koontz, Movie Adaptations

Contest Book #4

Odd Is On Our Side is the second graphic novel to feature Odd Thomas, a twenty-year-old fry cook living in the fictional Californian town of Pico Mundo. Odd—a character first introduced in Dean Koontz's 2003 novel Odd Thomas—has a loving girlfriend, a gift for making pancakes, and the ability to see dead people. Unfortunately, seeing ghosts isn't quite as useful as hearing them, so when a ghost wants Odd's help (and they often do), they have to communicate via the supernatural equivalent of a game of charades.

In this installment (a prequel to the main series), Odd and his gun-toting girlfriend Stormy attempt to enjoy Pico Mundo's annual Halloween celebration despite Odd's increasingly grim forebodings about the festivities. Ghosts ranging from the specter of Elvis Presley to the spirit of a little girl killed in Pico Mundo years earlier are trying to tell him something, but their warnings don't make sense—something is clearly wrong, but how can Odd and Stormy catch the bad guy if they don't even know what crime has been committed?

I have frequently thought that Koontz's stories make better graphic novels than they do standard books, a theory further verified by Odd is On Our Side. Koontz has a lively imagination and an appealingly dark sense of humor, but his writing style is no more than competent. One could wish that the book's interior artwork—by Australian manga artist Queenie Chan—was more interesting, and Nathan pointed out that the cover art looks like one of those dancing-silhouette iPod commercials (it totally does, too!), but Koontz's many fans can rest assured that the $10.99 they'll need to shell out for Odd Is On Our Side are entertainment dollars well spent.

[Review based on a publisher-provided copy.]

Labels: Book Reviews, Dean Koontz, Graphic Novels, Holiday Contest

Hmm. I see they're making a movie of Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, which is a loose (very loose) continuation of Mary Shelley's novel.

A movie of a novel adaptation (with, naturally, its own comic book adaptation, which we did find amusing, although probably not in the way the author intended) of an even earlier novel seems like we're wandering awfully far from our source material, but I figure as long as it isn't written by Dr. Titley, we'll be fine.

Labels: Classic books, Dean Koontz, Mary Shelley