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American Gods

Neil Gaiman

Start date: April 1, 2017

Finish date: April 30, 2017

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Mar 04, 2016 Heather rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, fantasy

I don't know what to say about American Gods, other than that I quite liked it, despite feeling like some parts of it lagged. (This may have been partly due to circumstances: while I was reading this book I got a cold, and when I have a cold I tend to be a bit grumpy and also to have at least one day where I do very little other than sleep, which seriously cuts into my reading time.) The premise of the book is satisfying: everyone who comes to a place brings their gods with them, and those gods, I don't know what to say about American Gods, other than that I quite liked it, despite feeling like some parts of it lagged. (This may have been partly due to circumstances: while I was reading this book I got a cold, and when I have a cold I tend to be a bit grumpy and also to have at least one day where I do very little other than sleep, which seriously cuts into my reading time.) The premise of the book is satisfying: everyone who comes to a place brings their gods with them, and those gods, who draw life/power from their believers, carry on living in that place, far as it may be from home. America, then, has a whole lot of gods in it, but lots of them are from times/places that mean they have less of a following than they used to. Meanwhile, there are new gods, new things/ideas where people put their energy and faith. The book sets itself up as being about the clash between old gods and new, but it isn't, not really, though I'm not sure how to describe what it is about.

The book follows a character named Shadow, who's finishing up a prison term as the book opens: he's looking forward to going home and returning to normal life, though he has a sense of unease, a feeling that something's about to go terribly wrong. Which it does: he ends up being told he's getting released a few days early, because his wife has died in a car crash. There's no normal life for him to go back to, and maybe normalcy is a fiction anyway, which becomes abundantly clear as he's on his way home for his wife's funeral: he somehow ends up on a plane sitting next to a man who knows his name, knows that his wife is dead, and offers him a job as his bodyguard/errand guy. Despite misgivings, Shadow ends up working for this guy, who calls himself Wednesday, and things get weirder from there.

I like how very full of things American Gods is (gods and other mythological and folkloric creatures, coin tricks, cons, roadside attractions) and how the main story is interspersed with interludes about various deities/magical beings (some of which are written by one of the characters in charming story-within-a-story fashion). This is the first novel-for-grownups by Neil Gaiman that I've read, and I look forward to reading more. ...more

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Sep 17, 2009 tiph rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, fantasy-sci-fi

Definitely for mature readers - some stuff really unnecessary and graphic - but the story is delivered in true Gaiman style: witty (I giggled at a random, tense moments), filled with well-constructed characters, and a fantasy story through and through.

If it wasn't for all that random graphicness of it, I'd give the book a five. ...more

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Aug 16, 2013 Chérie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

*knocks your foreheads* enjoyed it!

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Jun 25, 2011 Jennifer rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, fantasy, kindle-books

Meh. The story was really, really slow. The flashes to other 'gods' were just excuses to add unneeded sex scenes best I could tell. The really cool symbolism and parallelisms were few and far between, and honestly, Shadow himself seemed awfully passive to me. Maybe he was just Zen, but did the man hold an opinion of his own? I couldn't tell. ...more

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