American Gods (American Gods, #1) in Into the Forest

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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Nov 04, 2012 Ronyell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: ronyell-s-epinions-reviews, my-blog-reviews, native-american, neil-gaiman, religion, bram-stoker-award, world-fantasy-nominee, hugo-award, nebula-award, adult-book

“There are many Gods in America. It is just that many people either do not believe in them or see them anymore. Are they real or not? Only you could decide on that.”

I have been a huge fan of Neil Gaiman’s works for many years and some of my favorite works done by Neil Gaiman included Coraline and the “Sandman” series. So, when I heard that Neil Gaiman was writing some books for older teens and adults, I just had to check them out and that is where I found “American Gods!” “American Gods” has “There are many Gods in America. It is just that many people either do not believe in them or see them anymore. Are they real or not? Only you could decide on that.”

I have been a huge fan of Neil Gaiman’s works for many years and some of my favorite works done by Neil Gaiman included Coraline and the “Sandman” series. So, when I heard that Neil Gaiman was writing some books for older teens and adults, I just had to check them out and that is where I found “American Gods!” “American Gods” has won many awards including the Bram Stoker Award, the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and is a World Fantasy award nominee and it definitely deserved all of those awards! “American Gods” is definitely one of the most intense and creative stories I have ever read from the master of storytelling!

The book starts off with a mild mannered man named Shadow, who spent three years in prison for beating up some people. One day however, when Shadow mysteriously gets an early release from prison, he decided to go home to his wife Laura. But, when Shadow discovered that Laura was killed in a car accident, his life turned upside down and he did not know what to do with his life without Laura. It was not until afterwards that Shadow meets a mysterious old man named Wednesday, who wanted Shadow to work for him and Shadow agreed to work for him. However, as soon as Shadow starts working for Wednesday, he will soon discover that there are many dark secrets abound, which includes not only the people’s faith in Gods, but the fact that there is an upcoming war between the old Gods and the new Gods!

OH…MY…GODS!

Odin

There was just so much about this novel that made this a truly electrifying and awesome experience for me! Neil Gaiman has definitely created a brilliant story that not only revolves around the mysteries of mythical beings, but also plays on the theme about how people’s beliefs in these Gods affected the Gods themselves. I really enjoyed the characters in this story, especially Shadow as he is shown to be an extremely mild mannered man who does not seem to know what he has gotten himself into. Shadow may seem a bit awkward at the beginning since he does not seem fazed by the surreal activities that happen around him, but once you get deep into the book; his character arc becomes full of surprises that really shocked me! I also loved the way that Neil Gaiman wrapped the mythology about Gods into a more modern day setting that begs the question about whether or not people in current times still believe in the old Gods, which helped gave this book a more creative flair. I really enjoyed how Neil Gaiman was able to make the famous gods like Odin, Czernobog, Anansi and Easter seem like ordinary people as it made guessing which characters are which Gods the more interesting! I also loved the theme that this book sort of poses for readers as the war in this book is supposed to be between the old Gods (Odin, Czernobog and Anansi) and the new Gods as the old Gods were afraid of being forgotten once the New Gods, who are more up to date with the modern society, become more believable to the people. To me, it seems like the book was trying to point out about what happens when a society encounters new things that are interesting, like iPads or cell phones, and whether or not, they would forget the old things that they enjoyed in the past like board games and I wonder if the book was stating that you can have both the old and the new things in life as society changes over the years since they are both important your lifestyles (the old things in society helping people remember where they came from and the new things in society letting people see how society has changed over the years). Now, since I had already read Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” series, I am already accustomed to his dark storytelling for adults, so the fact that this was my first adult book by Neil Gaiman, I was not really shocked by the dark content presented in this book and it made me really enjoy the book even further!

For anyone who does not like strong language in a novel, this novel definitely has some strong language such as dropping the “f” bomb several times and using the “s” word several times. Also, this novel has so much disturbing content which includes dead bodies being revived and characters being murdered in a brutal way. While I did find most of the dialogue to be interesting and amusing, I cannot help but feel that some of the dialogue in this book is a bit too lengthy and they take up so much space in the book that it feels like the book could have been shorter if the dialogue did not go on forever.

Overall, “American Gods” was dark, disturbing and amazing at the same time! It may have taken me a long time to read through this book (this book has nearly five hundred pages), but it was definitely worth the experience in reading this unique little masterpiece and I would highly recommend this book to any fan of Neil Gaiman’s works!

Review is also on: Rabbit Ears Book Blog ...more

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Mar 06, 2016 Chad rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“A trail of lightning spread across the clouds, and Shadow wondered if that was the thunderbird returning to its high crags, or just an atmospheric discharge, or whether the two ideas were, on some level, the same thing.
And of course they were. That was the point after all.”

One of a very few books to live up to my over-hyped expectations. I only wish I'd not put off reading it for so long. ...more

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