Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: I heard Neil Gaiman read an excerpt from this book and I immediately bought it. I kept his "voice" in my head for the entire novel. It is spellbinding. I admit, I also had to get a dictionary of mythology because he covers everything here. Fantastic read!
Rating: 
Summary: Strange, but nice
Review: With a rambling plot that doesn't end up where you expect it to - three or four times - this book is incredibly hard to categorize. It's fantasy, it's edgy urban thriller, it's murder mystery, it's hallucenogenic magic realist literature, it's horror ... it has old gods moving among us, a walking corpse, secret agents, and small town life. Honestly, it's not quite what I expected (and I'm a long-time Gaiman fan), but I kind of liked it. He's said in his online journal about it that it's designed to repay rereading - that after reading it once, you should come back and enjoy seeing where he set things up, the motions backstage in the magic act that is this book. I don't know that I will, but it was worth reading. Try it from a library, if you don't feel like justifying $20 worth of book; it's impossible to say whether you'll like it or not until you've read it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Adventures of Shadow's Bladder
Review: "American Gods" is not so much a novel as it is a chronicle of the main character's bladder with bits of story in between. But the story is pretty good.Readers of Gaiman's "The Sandman" will recognize the world presented in "American God's" very well; in fact, "American God's" might better be titled "Sandman: Book 12." The rules of Gaiman's mythos are essentially the same: every god or legend that has ever been believed in currently exists somewhere in the world, and these beings have magic powers and abilities in direct proportion to the number of people who believe in them. This is an exciting concept, for Gaiman is perhaps the first to recognize that in a world thats cultures are coming closer together and interacting more (due to the advances in telecommunications), it is natural that the mythologies of those cultures should also come to blend. In "Sandman," and continuing in "American Gods," Gaiman has created a kind of Panagean super-mythos in which the beings from all mythologies can come together and interact. Just about every story that explores an unusual world needs a "Joe Average" to ground the story and to have the rules of the strange world explained to him (and thus, the reader.) This is usually, but need not be, the main character. Alice, of "Alice in Wonderland," Dorothy of "The Wizard of Oz," Arthur Dent of "The Hithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," and Cliff Steel of "The Doom Patrol" all serve this purpose. "American Gods'" straight man is Shadow, the guy with the bladder. Perhaps in order to avoid the easy trap of having his straight man be flat and boring, (which was the one serious flaw of his otherwise excellent previous novel, "Neverwhere") Gaiman made Shadow an ex-con. This is a good idea, and might have served as a means of spicing him up if only we had some idea as to why he had performed the crime in question. But we don't. Nor does Shadow really act in any way that suggests that he is a felon; he just seems to be a relatively nice guy who happens to have committed armed robbery and assault in the way that one may be a nice guy and happen to be--say--an ornithologist. But while being both a nice guy and an ornithologist is not mutually exclusive, one does not expect a felon to be a nice guy unless there is some unusual factor involoved. But we really do not get many hints as to who Shadow is and what makes him tick. He is little more than a sheep, following, and sometimes participating in, (although we don't really know why) the events of the story as they unfold. And while he managed to get away with this in "Neverwhere" because the supporting cast and antagonists were so phenomenal, the personalities of the supporting cast of "American Gods" are more often flat than not. The most confusing part is that Gaiman CAN write a good straight man; Matthew the Raven of "The Sandman" was one of the best of these types of characters that I've ever encountered. With that said, I really did enjoy the novel anyway. The premise is good, the story is good, the observations and inserts in the prose that are sometimes quite brilliant, and there are some very nice plot twists toward the end. A fun novel, but not a great one.
Rating:
Summary: It was OK... I liked "Never Where" better
Review: I have never read any of the "graphic books" by Neil Gaiman, so I cannot venture forth an opinion comparing them to his novels. I started reading his books with "Neverwhere" which I loved, then "Stardust" which I very much liked, and now this book, "American Gods". I have not completely formed an opinion on this book; it was OK, and it was sorta wierd. I have read lots of WIERD books - from the kind of strange you get from Stephen King to the wierd you get from the discount book store, (which sell books that the publisher gives them for pennies because they didn't sell well)... anyway, in my mind, the jury is still out on this one.
Rating:
Summary: awe inspiring. this book will haunt you for days.
Review: i was unable to do anything constructive for hours after i finished AMERICAN GODS. i just wandered around my apartment, completely dumbfounded. ambitious in scope, with an almost boundless capacity to surprise, this book and its characters seep deep into your subconscious, likely to remain there for days, if not forever.
Rating:
Summary: A must buy
Review: You have to get this book!!! Seriously!!!!! No.. I mean you HAVE TO read this! I think my favorite thing about American Gods are the interludes and stories within the stories. Gaiman uses a whole different style of writing and rhythm to tell these stories. While you can tell the book and the main story about Shadow is very difinatly American, it is these stories that make the book so wholy trusthful to the culture as it is in America today. The U.S. is such a combination of cultures and different people from all over the world and that is one thing I think this book represents. This is such a wonderful book and I think I wouldn't be the same without it!
Rating: 
Summary: boring pointless book
Review: This novel has an interesting premise but it is weakly executed. The characters and situations were so boring and uncompelling that I had trouble continuing with the book at times.Even his prose lacked vitality.The basic structure of new gods challenging old gods is interesting but except for a few intermittently scattered passages the book is awful.
Rating:
Summary: Layers like an Onion, keep peeling to the core.....
Review: I read this book starting at 3am, during one of the rare heat spells that we get here in Buffalo. The house was quiet, except for the whirring of the large fan in the room, keeping me cool while I became enveloped in this book, armed with my trusty cold bottle of Mountain Dew. I had been a fan of Mr. Gaiman's for a long time, from the concepts introduced in "Black Orchid" and "The Sandman", to the novels like "Good Omens", "Neverwhere" and "Stardust". (which is good in it's novel or graphic novel appearance.) "American Gods" is a wonder in imaginative uses of modern mythology. You may have to look up a few referances to catch a few lost traits behind many of the ancient characters as the reside in present day America, but why shouldn't you? You are intrested in them already, aren't you? The battle between the old gods and the new is innovative, fresh, yet still familiar on a subconsious level. Like a dream you forgot for a few days until an image triggers it up. The idea of an internet god and a television god hits close to home in our society, maybe it strikes a little fear there, too. It is a concept we see happening while dreading it at the same time: the worship of modern trappings. "American Gods" also has us ponder the old gods and our concept of faith and belief. Laura is the division between life and death, another dream/fear realized. Someone lost to death comes back to you, but are you better for it? Are they? Think if this as a gentler version of a chance at the Monkey's Paw. What would you wish for if you thought you had no one? Would you believe if old gods came to you with their stories, or does media worship have more of your faith these days? This, like most of Gaiman's works, is one of those novels that are great for the night dwellers like myself, who read best in the quietest hours, maybe crickets cricking in the background. There are some paragraphs that are shorter than they need to be, and the pace of the plot is mostly breakneck speed, but the nice thing about "American Gods" is that you can go back, re-read, and fill in the blanks. Keep the Faith.
Rating:
Summary: And now for something entirely fantastic
Review: A friend pointed out that Gaiman requires his readers to be able to conjure specific images and suspend certain beliefs in order to understand his stories. I think my friend meant to be negative, but I agree with him. Gaiman tells a wonderful tale here, but "there's reality and then there's reality": the book is rooted in the America we know, but portrayed such that we see things we would not see otherwise. It's like... coming home for winter break after your first semester at college. Home is familiar and real, but not everything is 'real' in the way you once thought it was. And who's to say it ever was? Neil Gaiman fans will read this book, no matter what the reviews say. Most, if not all, of them are going to love it. Gaiman virgins, especially those not 'into' the fantasy genre, will perhaps be a little intrigued and a little wary of delving into this semi-epic. The hype is enough to make a cautious reader even more so. That said, give it a shot anyway. You have nothing to lose but they way you look at the world.
Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get much better than this
Review: It's a rare author who weaves a perfect, creative narrative from the best of all possible materials, and a rare book that entertains, challenges, and entices from cover to cover with such a narrative. Neil Gaiman's "American Gods," the latest literary offering from the High Priest of the English Language's Temple of Original Stories, achieves exactly this for exactly that kind of writer. In "American Gods," the author of "Neverwhere" and the creator of the Sandman graphic novels fashions a story that fans will find distantly familiar, and new readers will lose themselves inside within a few pages. The book opens with Shadow, the main character and an almost Shakespearian anti-hero, walking out of prison to learn that his wife has died. On the plane ride home, he meets an enigmatic con-man named Wednesday who offers Shadow a job - and a second chance at life. With little else to do except practice coin tricks he learned in prison, Shadow reluctantly accepts and the two begin a wintery, midwestern odyssey gathering other characters together in an attempt to weather an upcoming storm. The book follow's Shadow's travels as he discovers who he's working for, what's going on, and more about himself than he would ever want to know. The journey involves dreams, altered realities, other dimensions, strange encounters, and myths and folklore from every non-American culture on the planet. As with other Gaiman work, there is a certain amount of fun to figuring out which fantastic character Shadow is talking to - and to figuring out where the twisting plot leads next. Gaiman's premise - that gods are physically created by belief and made manifest - should be familiar to fans of his graphic novels, short stories, and other work. It is this kind of creativity that sets Gaiman apart from other authors today; his stories are as timeless as the mythologies that span cultures across the world, and yet they are original and fresh enough to engage the reader on a primal and intellectual level. After reading books like "American Gods" and Gaiman's other works, one imagines he would be utterly comfortable as a bard or storyteller, weaving tales of heros around the fireplace late at night to ward off the darkness and cold outside. "American Gods" is just as epic as these old stories, and as engaging as a new novel should be. Gaiman is one of the most important and welcome voices in English-language literature today, although intellectual praise shouldn't put off the reader searching for a good story, because that's exactly what one will find between these covers. "American Gods" is a journey of delights that I can do nothing but recommend to any reader.
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