American Gods

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Summary: Sacred fun on the road with Odin and the gang.
Review: How ironic when the Great American Novel is written by an Englishman! The absolutely elfin Neil Gaiman earns himself a lasting place in American literature with this novel. There are echoes of Hawthorne, Melville, lots of Lovercraft, and more than a smidgen of Kerouac here. While wonderfully providing quirky and fascinating personalities for all his mythic cast, the characterization of the Egyptian cat goddess Bast (a Gaiman essential from his Sandman days) and of Whiskey Jack, from Native American folklore are quite unforgettable. But most amazing of all, is the precise and flawless capture of the quintessence of the American character. Mr. Gaiman's scalpel-like intuition and perception of who we are as Americans is awesomely brutal and unflinching. Few writers born on this side of the Atlantic understand and portray it a quarter as well. This would be an excellent choice for academic study, but that detracts nothing from the fast-paced, page-turning excitement and sheer joie de vivre. Life-affirming literature and a rollicking good time --- can't ask more of a novel!

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Summary: Clive Barker and Stephen King fans - check this out!
Review: There are only a handful of authors that consistently push the boundary of "imaginative" fiction, that every time I hear of the emergence of a "truly new talent" I'm really skeptical. Neil Gaiman, however, has completely won me over, and American Gods was a real eye opener in many ways.

It's the story of a completely rootless, and emotionally impoverished "regular guy," freshly paroled from prison only to discover that the life he's longed for in the joint has been totally annihilated with the unexpected death of his wife. At loose ends, he meets a mysterious, burly traveler who offers him a job on the spot, which Shadow (our hero) declines. As Shadow discovers not only that his wife is dead, but was killed during a sexual liason with his best friend and former employer, the tiny flame of emotion, so carefully guarded and cared for in prison, is snuffed out. The mystery employer, introducing himself as Mr. Wednesday, reappears to press his case once again, and this time Shadow takes him up on it.

Shadow is brought into a weird, orbiting subculture of seemingly everyday people, living on the fringes of American life. Each seems oddly familiar to him - as they will seem to you. And slowly, Shadow begins to realize the scale and scope of what he has become involved in - an impending battle between the scattered, ancient gods of immigrants and slaves, and the emerging gods of the American cultural and technological revolution.

For me, simply the amount of creativity put into the plot makes this a terrific read; but add to that Gaiman's craft of description and narrative - very stylish and stark - that combination makes American Gods a real treat. Ordinarily, I might observe that a hero with only a hole for a heart is hard to identify with, but Shadow isn't really heartless, you discover as the story progresses, and Gaiman does a great job of slowly bringing the reader along for the ride, with a boatload of creative plotwork along the way.

Neil Gaiman has placed himself outside of the current state of fantasy or horror - forgoing Clive Barker's tendency for cheap thrills, and Stephen King's dense description for a more economical style that describes in shadows and light, with occasional vivid color. American Gods is a well-crafted and imaginative trip behind the scenes in a land whose gods are as vulnerable as the people themselves.

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Summary: Good story, great imagination
Review: I have been a Neil Gaiman fan back to his days doing graphic novels. Unfortunately, I have found that his prose, while excellent when paired with vivid art, often don't stand up on their own. American Gods demonstates that he is matureing as an author and growing beyond the need for multi-media.

Many reviewers have given far too much of this book away. That is unfortunate and I will not repeat their mistakes. The book is intersting and fun. The philisophical conflicts that it embraces harken back to some of Gaiman's best work in Sandman. The subject matter is engrossing and his strong central character is one that the reader wants to follow. While I do not think the writing is great, it is good enough to be entertaining and carry a very imaginative story.

Gaiman has a gift for vivid imagry and a seemingly endless collection of interesting factoids that continue to peek the readers interst. This work represents a leap forward for a matureing author. As such, it a worthwhile read.

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Summary: Not as fun as Neverwhere
Review: Perhaps this was an overly ambitious subject -- I thought the book was swamped by it. The premise is a terrific idea, but I didn't think the plot and characters were nearly as well-developed. The lead character was vague and uninteresting to me, and the story was very slow-paced. I found it easy to put down. It struck me more as an "important" work than a fun one.

Also, I didn't care for the bad language and explicit sex. The author was probably trying for a grittier feel in this book, but for me, it was still a turn-off.

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers, particularly for prose, but this book was a disappointment to me.

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Summary: A book to cherish
Review: Neil Gaiman's latest is spectacular, complicated and wholly original. When someone sitting next to me on the train was curious about the title "American Gods", I was hard pressed to come up with a concise description and resorted to describing it as an apocalypse/resurrection myth. I won't recap the plot, since many of these reviews have already done that. Besides, you'd never believe me.

There are novels I read greedily, staying up all night to finish them because I can't wait to see how they end. This one absolutely had to be savored, and I tried to make it last as long as possible. I seldom re-read a book (feeling there are too many books I haven't read ONCE to spend precious time repating!) but I WILL read American Gods again, and again.

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Summary: "This Is a Bad Place For Gods..."
Review: Released from prison shortly after the accidental death of his wife, ex-con Shadow finds himself free, but bereft of all the things that gave his previous life meaning. As he bids his farewell to the fragments of that life, an eerie stranger named Mr. Wednesday offers him employment. Wednesday needs someone to act as aid, driver, errand boy, and, in case of Wednesday's death, someone to hold a vigil for him. Shadow consents and finds himself drawn unsuspectingly into a cryptic reality where myth and legend coexist with today's realities.

Mr. Wednesday, trickster and wise man, is on a quest. The old gods who came over to this country with each human incursion have weakened as their followers have dwindled and are now threatened with extinction by the modern gods of technology and marketing. Wednesday travels from deity to deity, rounding up help for what will be last battle. He engages ancient Russian gods, Norse legends, Egyptian deities, and countless others who have found their way to America in the past 10,000 or so years. Shadow never quite understands what his role is in all of this, but he experiences visions and dreams which promise that he is far more than Wednesday's factotum.

The plot is unendingly inventive as it treks its way across the country. From Chicago to Rhode Island, and Seattle to the magical town of Lakeside, Shadow's journey seems to follow the back roads of America. The people he meets are gritty, and the gods are even grittier. Gaiman creates believable characters with quick brush strokes and builds vivid landscapes that belie their mundane origins. Gaiman, recently moved to the U.S. has invited us along on his own quest to discover an America uniquely his own.

This is a novel that resonates at many levels, it is Shadow's initiation quest, Gaiman's search for the American identity, a revisionist Twilight of the Gods, and last, but not least a captivating piece of fiction. The gods that people this story came with people who found their way to this country from almost every time and place. Gaiman has put his finger on once of this country's greatest truths. Every person who ever lived here has roots from somewhere else. We have crossed oceans and land bridges, on foot, and by every other means of transportation. Our culture has been created whole cloth out of the character and beliefs of all those people. Gaiman has managed to capture a bit of that vision and put it on display for the reader.

After his superb work in "Neverwhere," "Stardust," and the Sandman graphic novels, Neil Gaimon has established himself a force to be reckoned with in the crossover horror/fantasy genre. Now with his new novel Gaiman establishes his mastery in a remarkable story of quest and transformation as he comes to terms with his own vision of America. "American Gods" defies classification and invites superlatives. This is one of 2001's must reads.

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Summary: a solid story
Review: I've read comparisons of Neil Gaiman with Stephen King. The comparison, I think, is unfair. Both are good storytellers with a deft mastery of language and imagery. However, unlike King, Gaiman does a much better job at taking us into that which lies beneath. King only shows what is there (at least, what is there in his fantastic horrible world). Gaiman takes us behind the scenes -- even, in this book, referring to it as Backstage.

That difference may seem trivial, but it is very important. It makes Gaiman's work more readable, more interesting, more thought-provoking.

Gaiman loves looking at that which lies beneath, and "American Gods" is no exception. This time around, he examines American belief in the form of the gods that were brought to this new land but, ultimately, were abandoned for the new gods of technology and pop culture. We follow Shadow, an ex-con with a dead wife, through various American roadside attractions and through the living quarters of the old gods. We watch as the final battle between the old and new builds up.

This is, so far, the best book that I've read this year.

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Summary: Why all the hype?
Review: The Bad: The characters are mostly dull, the plot (in some parts) is almost entirely predictable, and the story tends to wander where it doesn't need to.

Now for the good: Some interesting ideas about Gods and their origins. The "Spook Show" for instance, so many people believe in the men-in-black and black helicopter mythos that they actually come into existence in the story. That was fun reading. And there is an entire sub-plot about disappearing children that just plain gave me the willies!!

It was a decent book, but it was by no means excellent.

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Summary: First Experience to Gaiman's Novels
Review: My first focused experience of Neil Gaiman's work was (like a lot of people) The Sandman series. This was the first time I picked up one of his full fledged non-graphic novels. I was in no way disappointed. I'm not going to re-summarize the plot here. That's already elsewhere on this page, but I do want to say that I was extremely impressed with the amount of intelligence and research that went into this book. It was extremely entertaining, it didn't drag at any parts, and it was filled with enough little and major mysteries that I was able to figure out a good number of them and still get floored by the rest (some of these mysteries I even missed when the set-up was occuring... made me feel like a schmuck later, but literary-wise, that was a good thing). 'American Gods' was depressing (when it was meant to be), uplifting (when it was meant to be), exciting, well paced, and a bunch of other adjectives that should be inserted here as a compliment to the book.

I also want to personally thank Neil Gaiman for the one page rant by the character named Sam on her personal beliefs. That in and of itself was worth the book's price.

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Summary: A True American Novel
Review: Sometimes it takes an outsider to truly understand the inside. Not only does British writer Neil Gaiman flex his extensive knowledge and understanding of mythology, but shows a true understanding of America and the American mind. As a long time reader of Gaiman's (comics included), I was impressed by the maturity and depth of this work. Gaiman has shown he is more than a genre writer. He has truly written a great "American" novel.