Rating: 
Summary: Wildly imaginative...but unfocused
Review: Fans of Jonathan Carrol will love the machinations of this book, but it does suffer some from a lack of focus, and while it has multiple plot lines it doesn't really integrate them very well. It could well have explored some of the peripheral characters (mostly Gods and other supernatural beings) a little more, but it would have made for a very long book. Plenty of room here for a sequel and, if it stayed more focused it could be really great.
Rating: 
Summary: Great read, great rewards
Review: After reading this novel, you leave knowing you read a masterwork. Gaiman shows his range as a novelist in his unbelievable use of language and imagination. I found myself reading paragraphs over just so I could enjoy the passages once more. The images become so vivid through his words! It sounds pretentious to say all this, but you feel enlightened in a way afterward. I've never seen images like the ones I saw from reading this. It is awesome.
Rating:
Summary: Had Potential But Fell Short
Review: Man this book had some serious potential with the premise, but it disappointingly fell short. It is a very confusing text to wander through and at times is ridiculously confusing and I am a pretty intelligent person. It's just that he doesn't develop the plot quick enough and you are having to wait to learn more. I did read this book rather quickly and I must say that it is an entertaining trip and the ending is rather good, but trying to digest this thing is what takes the majority of ones' time.
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.
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