Rating: 
Summary: Interesting read
Review: Some years ago, I read a book called "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It was a truly funny book about angels, archangels, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and one very confused Anti-Christ. Since then, I've read just about everything Pratchett has available in the US, but I'd never read another Gaiman book. After reading the great reviews, I figured "American Gods" should be the one.It's obvious Pratchett and Gaiman have had some major philosophical discussions (perhaps over a pint or two). The first Pratchett book I read was "Small Gods". The premise was that gods die or disappear if people no longer believe in them. Gaiman's book explores the same theme, but on a grander scale. It felt somewhat like reading Stephen King's "The Stand" - if you've read both, you'll know why I think so - they're epic adventures including journeys and battles between two mythical forces. Both were interesting reads. Gaiman's obviously done his research on Norse and Egyptian mythology and voudon. You can't help but be interested in a book with characters like Odin, Loki, Anubis and Bast. It also has leprechauns, piskies, and one very determined zombie. For some reason, a bumper-sticker thought kept popping in my head as I read this book: Gods Are People Too.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to care about
Review: American Gods has an imaginative premise and the writing is fairly good, and I have given it points on that aspect, however one must be well versed in suspension of disbelief in that the characters have little resemblance to real people and the convoluted murkiness of plot requires great perseverance to achieve much reward. While you may gather this sort of story is not my usual cup of tea, I have had others whose opinions I value tell me they enjoyed it immensely, and therefore perused it. I find it always difficult to remain objective when the object of discussion, a book or movie, is experienced in a subjective fashion. My antipathy to this particular novel was engendered rather soon by the protagonist's depiction as an ex-con who seemed emotionally blocked in certain areas and fixated in others, yet for all his pragmatic experiences in prison and solid grounding in reality, he accepted with equanimity the most bizarre turn of events that defied all logic, even if couched in a Lord of the Rings setting. I realize this is a fantasy story, but still, when dealing with humans, one must assume there is such a thing as a normal reaction response to outrageous incidents. Shadow's lack of normal reactions seemed to remove him from concern by the reader, in other words, you just don't care what happens to him. And, while I can accept the conceptual fantasy idea of ancient Gods being worshiped in olden times and other lands and actually living among humans, I find it difficult to rationalize them working in, say, a slaugterhouse stunning cattle or running cheap cons to make a living. Either you are a God or you aren't, and if you are, you should be able to avoid such lowly endeavors no matter how many people still believe you exist, otherwise you're just another mundane human with delusions of grandeur. The powers they retained, while minor, still should have enabled them to move out of the slums. And the new breed, hip-hoppers with a bit of magic, seemed a weak effort. But again, I am not a fan of overly-complicated plots that seem to go nowhere nor accomplish much for the majority of the book, no matter how unique the concept or how well they are written. I feel characters should be somewhat realistic so the reader can relate to them in some small manner.
However, that said, if you enjoyed King's Dark Tower books, or even The Stand, then you might also enjoy this novel as it follows the general form quite well, a basic good versus evil premise complete with outrageous and eccentric players as seen through a veil of fog that clouds one's ability to make sense of things -as though Lamont Cranston was hiding behind your Lazy Boy as you read. I occasionally felt somewhat like I had wandered into the Winchester House and climbed a series of stairways that ended nowhere, feeling a momentary pang of regret that Ray Bradbury and Poul Anderson aren't still producing the volumes of quality fantasy they once did.
-Barker Reviews
Rating:
Summary: Identifiable Morality
Review: This is a great work, much like early Stephen King, or Terry Pratchett, or previous Gaiman works. But it is flawed in a way common to nearly every novel of this sort. It confuses the moral landscape early on, so that you aren't really sure whether the protagonist is fighting on the right side, and then it turns the tables, removing most of the ambiguity, and leaving us with yet another flawed-but-basically-good leading man. A literary work of this type yearns to be freed from this cliché, and for a while I thought Gaiman had it in him. I can only hope that he's not finished yet.
Rating: 
Summary: Well, I guess I don't get it...
Review: Like the other reviewer who has read since he was 5, I've been reading a long time. I bought this book at the airport, having forgotten to bring a book. I'll keep this short. If you enjoy fantasy and mythology, read this book. If you want to be scared or kept on the edge of your seat, find something else. I didn't find this book to be at all suspenseful, it was quite predictable. I got the whole "plot twist" quite soon. It wasn't the worst book I'd ever picked up but it wasn't the best either. I have read books that I didn't want to put down, Boris Starling's "Messiah" and Caleb Carrs "The Alienist" come to mind, however, this wasn't one of those. Don't believe the hype, this book isn't going to renew your hopes for non-fiction.
Rating:
Summary: He knows his stuff
Review: Neil Gaiman is someone who I read as a novelist, I've yet to go for his comic work, though I read illustrated work, so it's not unusual for me to pick up this book. Shadopw, the protagonist of this book is many things-----first we suspect that he is the mbodiment of a God as a lot of the main characters in this book are. If he is the son of Odin, then is he Thor?
Or is he just a man sired by a God and brought to the brink of reality as one form of God fights others?
A variety of Gods make appearances here as a form of Armageddon approaches. I wish I could say that this novel had a strong central point but it spins around this coming war and how to avert it with Shadow's dead wife walking around. Shadow eventually sacrifices himself as a vigil to Odin-----all of this occuring with the 20th century.
What works in this novel?
The origin/genesis of the gods on American soil and their human incarnations and how Shadow sees glimpses of their power.
What doesn't work?
At the end of this novel you realize Gaiman has done a lot of setting up, a lot of creation of mythos into his own multi-Godded world but to what end?
Gods are everywhere, everyone, which is a terrific concept, strong and I believe to some degree the truth of existence, but the war/commentary on God in America is rather empty by the end. The book goes nowhere. Yes, Shadow finds the light within, finds purpose, reason to be but we never think that the world is in any danger. Perhaps this is because teh opposing Gods are technology, TV, the Internet. This book should've been expanded, travelled more. Perhaps a trilogy, there's a lot to be mined here, relationships to be explored. But in one book it feels like a prelude and smacks of being cut short too quickly.
Rating:
Summary: Good, But Too Long
Review: A friend told me that this book was the best thing he had ever read in his life. I don't know about that, but its certainly worth a try, especially if you are a Neil Gaiman fan. The story is about a looming war between the old Gods from Norse, Roman, Indian, Middle Eastern and other mythologies and the gods of today (the internet, television, etc). The book spends too much time following the main characters while they wander around the US but even that has its moments. There are some genuinly funny situations and some interesting characters. An interesting thing about this book is that it mixes mythologies. This, no doubt, comes because of Gaiman's background as a comic book writer. That art form, as you are probably aware, mixes the most absurdly different characters and gets away with it. Similarly, in this book you have a Norse God meeting Eastern European gods and so on. The best parts of the book are teh short stories that set teh background for the main plot. They follow how various gods managed to reach America. Some of them are excellent taken as short stories. Overall, this book could have been better, but its still worth picking up.
Rating: 
Summary: Welcome Originality in a Sea of Sameness
Review: American Gods is a wholly original novel, and one of the best I've read in a long time. The story had me hooked from page two, and was quite unpredictable. This one requires you to think a bit, which is fine by me. The book has depth. Shadow is a splendid character, and has some pretty intense demons. After reading the also excellent Neverwhere, I still believe Gaiman has yet to hit his peak. He's going to be great.
Rating:
Summary: I just have to be personal in this one
Review: I have to be personal in this one. I read a lot, since I was 5 I read a lot. I prefer history books or books with a "theme", like detective storys etc. It is very rare that I can get hooked on a book that I do not know where it will lead me. This one does. In forty something years of reading this is the second book that has me reading nonstop trying to figure out what the next page will bring me. It has little to do with the overall story, but mostly the sheer joy every page of it brings. (the book that had me first feel it was "lonesome dove" by Larry Mc Murtry). This guy knows his mithology and mostly he knows how to write in a way that you can almost taste the words, instead of just swallowing them in the haste for the plot.
It is a tremendous pleasure for those of us who like the written word
As I said, this is a very private feeling and I apologize for those wanting more sensible reviews
Rating:
Summary: The Gods Have Spoken...
Review: AMERICAN GODS is a flummoxing experience- the nonplussed state you find yourself in as you make your way through the heady tome is a more than pleasant one. At so many points, multitudes of junctures, vast numbers of interphases, a marveling feeling tends to spontaneously coalesce in the mind of the reader (at least, I'd imagine it would), a warm, smiling sensation which at first whispers then speaks then all-out shouts a sermon proselytizing the incredible experience Neil Gaiman has summoned from the apparently vast spring of his creativity. This is a literary victory in the ongoing battle against jejune efforts, mediocre attempts, total failure of executions- this is a book which can and should be examined and absorbed by all those who complain that fine modern-day works are rare commodities; such staunch devotees of obligatory standards will find much to reward with GODS, and their precious cache of valuable jeweled praises will be significantly less heavy following the experience. GODS centers on Shadow, a man who is forced into a cocoon of sorts when he is sent to prison; he doesn't realize it, but when he is released, his life has undergone a total metamorphosis, as thorough and complex as the conversion of chrysalis to moth. Destiny has taken over, fate has intervened- and in what form does this metaphysical hand appear? His name is Mr. Wednesday. Strange, charming older gentleman. Before Shadow knows it, the man has breached his world, become a part of it. He knows things about Shadow, stuff he shouldn't be privy to, but is; he's also persuasive, with a charmingly disarming and dominant personality, so it doesn't take long for Shadow to agree to Wednesday's offer of employment. This alliance denotes the commencement coordinate of Shadow's sojourn, a journey of fantastic- and phantasmagoric- pathways and stops. He comes to realize that Wednesday is more than just a man- such nomenclature begs the most hyperbolic interpretation of the term 'understatement', in fact. Further, all of the 'man's' cronies exist beyond the reaches of normal scientific reason. Put quite simply, they are gods. Gods of old, gods of yesteryear, gods of statures which brimmed with effulgent power and royal hierarchy in a forgotten past; they aren't what they used to be, they are archaic in the current cultural landscape, irrelevant anachronisms relegated to second-fiddle ghosts which roam the land and take whatever odd jobs that come their way. So what happened to them? Progress. That noun which strikes awe and fear in the faces and the intellects of those who are steadfast in their ways and stubborn with respect to acceptance of displacement- and who are the displacers? Well, the new gods of course. The industrial complex of deity worship is not a static sector, it is as prone to demographic shifts and market realignments as any ordinary business. As an example, take what you are utilizing to read this very review- cyberspace has become one of the freshly-vibrant new entities which has captured the staunch faith of so many of the country's flock. And then there is television; it's been around a lot longer than Al Gore's purported invention, but it is still a young lord compared to Wednesday and his ilk. Shadow finds out early on that his boss is planning something big- war. An immense fiery fight to take place in the land of the idols. He and Wednesday traverse the country, stopping at sacred spots full of mystical power and visiting the dwellings of many of the obsolete totems of mythology; like a president calling on the heads of state of foreign countries to talk up a coalition, he does his best to rally the troops and get them in fighting order. But that's all superficial stuff; there's more going on here than just the oncoming storm. Shadow meets many oddball characters- including his reanimated wife- and he learns much about the extra-reality which exists in addition to the normal three-dimensional world he's always known. The above synopsis cannot be construed as anything approaching exhaustive in nature; from beginning to end, GODS sweeps you along an ever-shifting, highly-detailed presentation of plot...every twenty pages or so sees a new road about to be taken. Straight, linear tendencies are not welcome by Gaiman- instead, he wants to fill your mind with an intoxicating dose of grandiose vision as quickly as possible. The core essence of this predilection cannot be captured by a simplistic statement such as "the pacing was quick", however- yes, you could characterize the novel as fast, but not necessarily in a quantitative sense, for it does possess a fairly substantial word count...for want of better phraseology, it perhaps could be said that GODS's pacing is "intellectually swift", since the number of quality ideas/concepts packed into the chapters was maximized at an optimal level; in some odd, contradictory fashion, the reader is left with the feeling that he/she raced through the work at a silver-hot clip, even though each notion is developed in the fullest of fashions and did not possess the usual attributes of taut prose construction. A useful illustration of this thesis can be found in the interludes, devices which provide not only substantive background material about the old deities and their coming to America, but also support the main story and inject some contrasting rhythms for the sake of variety. Gaiman essentially retells stories- in contemporary guise- from the expansive collection of extant mythoi, tall tales which have become catholic by now to the global culture; this is an important subtext to the yarn, for even though it can be enjoyed without prior expertise on figures such as Odin and Loki, reexamination of the total arc through such a lens will only enhance the value of the shenanigans. The author's style/voice was rather functional and cursory in the beginning, but as the timeline advanced, it became amazingly metaphorical, literate, and lyrical. Complex and entertaining, AMERICAN GODS is profusely recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Neil's new flavor
Review: Gaiman's American God's deviates from the light-hearted story-telling, with slightly darker underlying themes found in 'Stardust' and 'Neverwhere'. The book's structure is more like comic book frames than a flowing, page-turning story. I was thrown at first by this shift in style, but gradually sunk into the book all the same. It is a mythic story told on a high-scale and plopped down into the world we live in. The characters are unique and memorable, the voice, clear and certain. Again, I didn't read it as quickly as I had his other books, but this one requires more attention. And when I reached the conclusion, I found the long, hard journey quite satisfying and worth the trip.
|
