American Gods (American Gods, #1) in The Alternative Worlds

Feb 07, 2012 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: secret-histories, legendarium

a protagonist, Shadow. calm, collected, quiet, passive, cagey, a tough guy and a sensitive guy. his life has been about reacting and not impacting. he moves through his story as if through a dream; tragedies and betrayals and mysteries and confidence games, the beginnings and endings of hope and love and life - all viewed as if through water, as if these terrible wonders were happening to someone else. he could be nothing more than a pawn in life - let alone a pawn of the gods - but yet his pass a protagonist, Shadow. calm, collected, quiet, passive, cagey, a tough guy and a sensitive guy. his life has been about reacting and not impacting. he moves through his story as if through a dream; tragedies and betrayals and mysteries and confidence games, the beginnings and endings of hope and love and life - all viewed as if through water, as if these terrible wonders were happening to someone else. he could be nothing more than a pawn in life - let alone a pawn of the gods - but yet his passivity is combined with an inner strength, a gentle kindness, an innate decency. his decency is more than a trait - it defines him. and when he does decide to act, his actions become another one of this novel's terrible wonders. he is complex and completely appealing. one of my my favorite heroes in modern fiction.

a wife, Laura. dead before the novel begins. a living ghost, a revenant; aided by a magical coin. a sad and appalling and dreamlike journey. a terrific payoff.

a Road Trip, full of kitchen-sink reality, full of terrible wonder.

an old guard, the Old Gods. Odin, Anansi, Czernobog, Anubis and Thoth and Bast and Horus, Eostre, Kali, the Norns. the Queen of Sheba - strangely, now an Old God. their transformation into prosaic american emigres - confidence men and tenement dwellers and whores and jailhouse cellmates - is both a fun game of mystery-solving (guess the god!) and a rather sad parallel to how the world of the not-aged pushes the aged into their little corners, out of sight and out of mind, into a world of irrelevance. and yet the old gods are not portrayed with cloying sweetness - there is no filter of nostalgia or hints of some long-lost, longed-for Olden Way to make us love them. they are fascinating, powerful, often monstrous, entirely without easy sentiment.

a new guard, the New Gods. Technology, the Media, the Vehicle, the Men in Black. it's easy to put them all automatically in a nice little box labeled The Villains. but that's too simple; too instantly gratifying. the novel's portrait of these potentially repellent figures is one painted in broad strokes, lacking subtlety - but it is also a fair one... they sound and act like villains, and yet they are not. how can they be? we worship them on a daily basis. they are only evil if we consider our modern age an evil one.

a creepy subsidiary villain: a Kobold. he lives in a portrait of classic americana that miraculously manages to be free of condescension.

a Confidence Game, long-game style, played by two gods, with our hero as their catspaw. cleverly done by the gods. beautifully overturned by our hero. brilliantly pulled off by the author.

an author, Neil Gaiman. i'll admit that i have well-stocked reserves of love for the man, ready and willing to be accessed. his Sandman series is my favorite comic book, full of crazy imagination and complex mysteries and creepy villains and complicated heroes and terrible, wonderful journeys. so i was prepared to love this book as i love its author, to draw upon that deep well of affection. there were connecting factors that helped to ease my transition from dealing with my old god of awesome comics to this new literary god of popular fantasy fiction; namely his interest in unearthing and revitalizing the world's myths and legends - an ongoing Gaiman leitmotif. i was less prepared to discover that Gaiman is an actual writer! his prose is fluid, nuanced, supple, at ease with both constant ambiguity and you-are-there, detailed realism. both grounded and hallucinatory. the narrative is anchored by everyday reality as well as a strange lack of affect - a blankness of tone that is a good fit for a phantasmagorical road trip. and then it is capable of sudden, surreal flights of visionary madness, a grey-toned package that becomes a conjurer's box of magic. and then that tricksy legerdemain can just as quickly transform back into a soulful and emotionally honest portrait of one man's journey through various adventures, through his own life, to the end of it and back again. who could ask for more?

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Dec 29, 2008 Kara Babcock rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: own, favourites, 2010-read, urban-fantasy, fantasy, mythology-remix, 2010-best10, hugo-winner, nebula-winner

Second Review (Finished December 10, 2010.)

Oh, let me count and enumerate the many and various ways I love Neil Gaiman and, in particular, American Gods. I love it because I am insecure and, at times, unsure of my love for it. I love it because it isn't perfect, yet it's still wonderful. I love it because it promises gods and gives us people, and somewhere along the way, somehow, Gaiman manages to make me cry about the death of a goddess who eats people with her vagina.

American Gods holds a spec ...more

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Mar 25, 2008 Brad rated it liked it

Shelves: urban-fantasy, personal-mythology, meta-review, fantasy

After loving the Sandman comics and getting a few good laughs out of Good Omens, I decided to finally give Neil Gaiman's prose (solo that is) a fair shake. It was 2003, and I knew that American Gods had recently won the Hugo, so I decided to make it my choice.

I vaguely remember enjoying the experience, but I distinctly remember thinking it was an orgy of ideas where none received the attention I craved or they deserved. The idea of the Old Gods doing battle with the New Gods across the United S ...more

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Jul 08, 2008 Jackie "the Librarian" rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, adultfiction

This is a work of dark, urban fantasy with roots going back to the dawn of man. The old gods who came to America with immigrants from cultures worldwide have faded with their believers. Now, they are in a battle for existence with the new deities of technology, transportation, and telecommunication. Can Odin rally the old gods to battle? Or is it too late?

* I really like all the background mythology flashbacks, with the different cultures and gods. And I was verrrry curious as to who, exactly Sh ...more

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Apr 12, 2008 Sandi rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, 2008

This was my second reading of this book. I wish I could give it 5 stars because it is very well written and very complex. I truly think this is a great book. But, after reading it twice, I'm still uncertain as to whether I like it. It's very, very dark and the main character is very depressing. He just walks through life and lets crappy stuff happen to him. Then, the gods take over and even crappier stuff happens to him.

This book is big on atmosphere. It's a weird combination of surrealism and ...more

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Jul 06, 2011 bsc rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, fiction, read-2011

I got talked into reading another Gaiman book and yet again it felt like a waste of time. I guess this will be my last. Too bad, because I like the man quite a bit.

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Jun 04, 2008 Nicky rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: based-on-myth-saga-etc, fantasy, favourites

I love this book, and I've read it so often. The concept is amazing, and I love all the little details. It kind of makes me want to go to America on a road trip... ...more

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Jun 12, 2007 Brooke rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007, fantasy

It's taken me a few weeks since I finished American Gods to review it, because I'm not quite sure how much I liked it. Its tone is extremely different from Stardust and Neverwhere; it's very dark, dreary, and cold, and it's difficult to root for any of the characters. No one is entirely sympathetic, although it's not as if any of them have really done anything wrong.

The premise of the novel is that as immigrants came to America, they brought their gods with them, and as America aged, its people ...more

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Nov 21, 2008 Suz rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, fairytale, airport, fantasy, kindle, because-it-s-a-movie, award-winner

I just learned, according to GR that I've just finished my 2nd reread of this book, which I find fascinating, because I don't remember reading it twice before. Sure. Why not.

I re-read the book because of the new TV series; I wanted to make sure that I had the plot correct because I was a little fuzzy on it.

Anyway, I've dropped it from 5 to 3 stars. Maybe it's the headspace I'm in, maybe it's that I'm a different person who reads different thing into books, but I just didn't enjoy it that much. I ...more

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Aug 29, 2008 Tatjana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction-fantasy, fiction-speculative

This book was a genuine page-turner for me. I am not one of those die-hard Gaiman fans. I like his work well enough, but this book really connected with me. Maybe it was the complexity of the story and how it kept me on my toes. Maybe it was the cadence. Maybe it was the dry witticisms.
Whatever it was, I really enjoyed it.

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