American Gods (American Gods, #1) in On Paths Unknown

Sep 23, 2012 David Katzman rated it did not like it

I find myself shocked at the awards this book has won and the praise heaped upon it. How on Gods’ Earth could a book about Gods walking on the Earth among mortals be so pedestrian? Somehow Gaiman managed to turn a potentially cool premise into something boring. For those who love this book—and I know it is many—please forgive the sarcasm to follow as I blaspheme against the beloved Gaiman. But Gods help me, the more I read, the more I hated American Gods.

First off, while the premise sounds inter ...more

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Jul 30, 2017 Cecily rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy-faeries-magic, usa-and-canada, identity, roadtrips-and-travel

"Many things prove to me that the gods take part in the affairs of man." - Herodotus

In Gaiman’s story, the converse is equally true: the very existence of the gods depends on the affairs of mankind, specifically, that people believe in them. Like mortals, they need to be loved.

Gods from cultures around the world travelled to the US in the minds of immigrants. The indigenous people already had their own gods, and now (2001) there are new gods as well: internet, capitalism, media etc. In a mater ...more

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Feb 07, 2012 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: legendarium, secret-histories

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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Aug 15, 2012 Paul rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy

Thoroughly enjoyable romp through America and mythology. This story is stuffed with gods from all cultures and mythical beings of all types. They came to America in the minds of people moving to America and took shape there. They still inhabit America , mostly unbelieved in, often rather old, some doing menial jobs or semi-retired. There are also new gods, media, TV, internet and there are tensions between old and new. Into all this comes Shadow, an ex-con, hired by Mr Wednesday (aka Odin). Ther ...more

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Aug 11, 2011 [Name Redacted] rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Well, I HAD a review. Apparently sometime before July 22nd, 2013, it disappeared.

Long-story-short, I didn't enjoy this. At all. It felt like Gaiman was simultaneously trying to translate the mythos he'd established in his "Sandman" comics to prose (unsuccessfully) while also trying to assert that he was a writer for adults and not just funny-books (desperately). Neither really worked for me. None of the characters were especially likable, sympathetic or compelling, and the whole thing felt almos ...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Jan Rice rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I finally read one of Neil Gaiman's books, which had long been on my agenda. First reaction to an early chapter: What!?! Soft porn fantasy style? Definitely not chick lit! But I was hooked. Soon came pantheons of gods (especially Norse), to cause mischief and to be emulated, and reinvigorating the everyday world with divinity and miracles. Love that stuff and glad I went along for the ride! And definitely has socially redeeming value. Last but not least--Rock City is in this book! ...more

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Feb 20, 2018 Jlawrence rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: re-reads, s-lswordchallenge

Hearing raves about the STARZ adaptation of this book, I determined to devote some binge time to to the series, but wondered if I should re-read the book first. It's been 15 years or so, and I only had a hazy recollection and middling opinion of it (Gaiman's Sandman is one my all time-favorites, but American Gods had not left a strong impression). The advice of those who had both read and seen it was to give it a re-read first, as the series adds more backstory to several of the characters.

I enj ...more

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May 07, 2017 Chinook rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: america, audiobook, fantasy

I listened to the audiobook of this because my book club is discussing it next month and it's been years (ten?) since I first read it. I recall that I tore through the book and liked it so much that I kept my copy, which I often don't do after reading something. The audiobook didn't work for me as well - it's not that it isn't very well read, because it is. But it felt like it moved too slowly by audio and some of the scenes were awkward to have read to me. By the time Shadow got to Lakeside and ...more

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Feb 17, 2019 Sean DeLauder rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hugo-winner, nebula-winner

This book is a 600-page crescendo that could have been closer to 450 if we removed the scenes of indulging in cultural delicacies.

A great story, but, good heavens, the characters must have spent a quarter of the book eating (this is likely an exaggeration).

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Nov 11, 2016 Flora rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fairy-tales-folklore, scifi-fantasy-speculative

This will never be my favourite of Neil Gaiman's novels - it's just too messy, too sprawling - but the full cast audio version is excellent. At first I wondered how all the different voices would come together - it's a full read through, not a dramatisation - but actually it works very well. It does meant that a certain trick Gaiman plays with a character's name loses some of it's impact, but that's ok - I knew what was coming anyway. ...more

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Jan 09, 2012 Tom rated it it was amazing

One of the most imaginative works of fiction since the Bible. Neil Gaiman's ideas about modern godhood are fascinating and thought provoking. This should be a must-read book. ...more

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