Lornographic Material

Fuck Dean Koontz. Fuck him with a rusty fish hook then dunk him in a kiddie pool filled with rubbing alcohol before lighting the whole thing on fire. 

Those were my first thoughts after finishing this cash grab. After reading the absolute shit that was Wilderness (the first purchase I ever requested a refund for on Amazon), I told myself I wouldn't be suckered into Koontz and Bantam's short story scams. But I thought, "It's Odd Thomas. They wouldn't purposely mislead me where one of Koontz's most cherished characters is concerned!" The hell I preached. 

I spent $0.99 for two pages. Two. Fucking. Pages. The first page and the last page. Everything in between is filler so that Bantam could charge us for this commercial disguised as a short story. All 30 pages in between is generic thriller crap. You can smell the triviality coming off it. It's the kind of stench you can see. 

I was hoping for a story about Odd and Stormy, you know, what the packaging promises:

Here, read the synopsis:

Amid the dizzying rides, tantalizing games of chance, and fanciful attractions of a state fair, two teenage sweethearts on the cusp of life and love’s pleasures find their way to a shadowy carnival tent brimming with curiosities. There, from the bizarre and enthralling Gypsy Mummy, a mechanized merchant of dreams and prognosticator of tomorrows, the young couple learns what fate promises for them. But fate, for Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn, is something altogether different: full of dark corners, sharp edges, and things no seer or soothsayer could ever anticipate.
 
And for Odd Thomas, a gallant fry cook from a sleepy California desert town, the future beckons—to listen to unquiet spirits, pursue unsettling mysteries, and learn shocking truths . . . for a purpose far greater than himself.

Two pages of carnival, folks. All the rest is Stormy and Odd running around after a ghost with cleaver in his neck. They find the guy's house. Unshackle some women. Call in the authorities. Then, and ONLY then, do they head to the carnival. I wanna break something. This is even worse than the misleading, broken synopsis for The City. 

This is how I think the meeting with Dean and Bantam went:

Dean: So I got about two pages of the story you requested. 

Bantam: The fuck? We can't sell two pages! Can't you give us something with, at the very least, a murder in it?

Dean: I'd be phoning it in, but yeah, I can do that. Are you sure people will want to read it?

Bantam: We'll disguise it as backstory; tell everyone that the short reveals the story of the day Odd and Stormy got that ticket that Odd carries with him throughout the series.

Dean: Okay, so two pages of story, and about, what? Thirty pages of filler? Sound about right?

Bantam: This is why you sell millions of books, Dean. You know how to bow to commands. 

END SCENE

In summation: I retract my previous statement. Fuck both Dean Koontz and his publisher. Even if it didn't go down like I stated above, Dean still wrote it, and Bantam still published it. And guess what? I'm returning it. This is only my third refund request ever.