Rating: Summary: WOW! Review: this is an excellent book with one of the most fantastic story lines that will hook anyone into the depths of the story with Gaiman's fantasic voice and way of story-telling. the book has great characters and the mysterious plot keeps getting thicker, why there isnt a part where u wont be reading just to find out what happens next! from a life threatening game of chess to a mysterious talk with a girl on the roof to robbing a bank this book will get u. if anyone likes mystery/fantasy/action/adventure books u will love this book! i can get very bored with books really quickly and i truely couldn't put this one down! neverwhere is also a really good book by neil gaiman!
Rating: Summary: Mythology Takes a New Turn Review: Or many turns as the case may be. This is great all the way around. Good writing, good description, great characters. Love the way the author incorporates so many different types of mythology. You won't want to miss this one.
Rating: Summary: I WILL ADMIT THAT I DON'T THINK EVERYTHING NEIL GAIMAN Review: writes is automatically brilliant (though I enjoyed SANDMAN a lot) but I think this is his first "great" novel. I will admit I skipped some of the tangents that you will find at the end of chapters because I wanted to get on with the PLOT and I did take a weeklong break between Chapter 12 and Chapter 13. But it is a very satisfactory story with at least two plot points that I would never have expected. And, like all of Gaiman's work, it makes you think. What else do you want?
Rating: Summary: A Dark Look at America Review: I was surprised by how much I liked this book - I'd never been able to get into Gaiman's work before (particularly Sandman), but I found this to be one of the strongest works of modern fantasy I've ever read.This is a different kind of road trip and it tells the stories of many gods, both living and dead.
Rating: Summary: A shambolic, shamanistic trip thru the USA and mythology Review: Remember how ornery the Norse, Greek or African Gods are in mythology? How petty? How vengeful and selfish? Neil Gaiman portrays them just that way, and the comparisons to America's new "Gods" (and American folk in general) are very insightful and pretty amusing. Neil Gaiman is a storytelling genius when working in comics. In Sandman, he was able to sum up eons of myth or contradition in the span of one or two panels of a comic page. In the print medium, the pace is a little slower. The digressions that made his comics work so thoughtful and enjoyable are a little more frustrating here. Plus, there are numerous sub-plots involved. The fact that everything gets cleared up at the end is satisfying and if there's a few "deus ex machinas" along the way, well what'd you expect? It's about Gods after all. If you've ever felt like the desires of "American culture" are at odds with people's spiritual needs, you should enjoy this book. I think that's what Gaiman's getting at here, and the answers aren't nearly as highfalutin' as one would think. They're discomforting -- sometimes mundane, sometimes horrifying -- in short, the way "Old World" Religions probably actually were when they were still taken as literal truth.
Rating: Summary: A book you live... Review: Quite honestly, I found this novel to be both amazingly beautiful and beautifully amazing. From start to finish. If you are too busy reading these reviews and not the book, well, then you will never understand. Thanks, Neil, for a truly moving experience.
Rating: Summary: Someone has to make this book into a movie!! Review: I originally heard about Neil when a friend recommended Good Omens(GO) (co-authored with Terry Pratchett) about 10 to 12 years ago. After reading GO a second time a few years ago, I started to seek out other works by the authors. After reading a couple of each of their works, I can now separate out their contributions to GO. (My guess is that Neil does the dark drama, and Terry adds the Douglas Adams type humor) It was by chance that I heard about American Gods earlier this summer, the premise sounded unique enough to keep it at the top of my list until it arrived at a local bookstore. This book is easy to read and the detail is such that you really feel you just watched a movie. Plus, being from the midwest, I can relate to a lot of the places mentioned in the book. This just adds to visualization!! The book has several twists and great foreshadowing (no pun intended since the main character is Shadow). The characters are definitely unique in literature. As far as I know, this is definitely not just another recycled plot. I am usually intimidated by books this long because I tend to lose interest. However, I read this book in record time. It draws you back to find out what's happening. Based on AG and GO, I am now reading Neverwhere and hope to have the same experience.
Rating: Summary: Interesting insight by a gifted writer Review: I've read just about everything put out by Neil Gaiman with the exception of Good Omens (I just can't seem to get around to reading that one). Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed each and every word of this exquisite story about myths and rituals or the lack thereof in American culture. Much of what the characters speak about ring true and Mr. Gaiman does a great job of making the reader connect with the underlying themes sprinkled throughout the book. A Thought provoking book that will keep you wondering about the things you believe in.
Rating: Summary: Still Going Strong Review: I have read several of Gaiman's works, and this one rates with his others as being one of the best I've read. With characters that you remember, and plot twists that come at you from no where, I routinly stayed up till past dawn reading this book. Even the ending after the climax had a few twists left in it. I recomend this book, as I believe you will truely enjoy it. If you don't have a more open minded view of things however, I wouldn't sugest it. The most importent thing is to loose oneself in the story, and this one almost drags you kicking and screaming into it. A true Gaiman classic.
Rating: Summary: Sandman 101 Review: If you consider how crappy most "fantastic" books are, this one is a real gem. However, take it from a rabid Gaiman fetishist: the man can do much better than this. As a matter of fact, American Gods reads a lot like another "Sandman" instalment - think of it as yet another one of the dozens of side stories in the Dream epic. Hell, it even has cameos of many Endlesses! You get it all: weird and very dark humour, charismatic and enigmatic characters galore, hidden and not-so-hidden references to any mythology you can think of, lots of witty and quite dead people... just like a condensed Sandman. So it's all very good, ain't it? Erm... not really, no. In a number of places, things really look rushed and overlooked (eg. a scam scheme gets explained wrong, three characters meet by chance in the very same remote place to get the story going - think General Hospital logic -, there are a few typos...). No major problem, of course, but you'd really expect something better from one of the world's most prominent contemporary writers. I also guess that the book might appeal more to non-US readers than the opposite, but this is just a hunch. As an Euro-snob myself, I found a few descriptions cruelly funny indeed....
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