Rating: 
Summary: Neil Strikes Out
Review: Often times poets are chastised for turning to novels, as are journalists, playwrights, whatever. So why should we reserve anything different for graphic novelists or more appropriately comicists? Gaiman's Sandman series is unarguably one of the finest stories to hit graphic novels/comics. The characters and plots are vivid and I found myself zooming through each book eager to read the next. As a novelist Gaiman falls flat, while the plot of American Gods kept me reading, the wordy descriptions and trite, sometimes down right awful metaphors, had me cringing with every page I turned. How many events can be correlated with a boy letting out piss in a warm pool, I mean really? While the characters were alive I longed for the dark art of the comic book to release me from the hell of prose that Gaiman has no handle on, nor talent for. This book may be the best argument for comic books to take a place as more than just a genre itself. Maus, Sandman, these are stories that would not be as powerful without the visual accompaniment of the art. Gaiman is a talented graphic novelist, he is *NOT* a non-illustrated novelist in any sense of the word.
Rating: 
Summary: Gaiman Grows Up
Review: Neil Gaiman's work is always imaginative, fun and provocative, but this time it's more. He combines myth and history, politics and pop culture, with a variety of characters that ring true as gods, legends and people. The book sweeps across the continent and through 15 millennia, yet it reads as a most personal story. It's really great.
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Summary: Neil moves into the large epic novel and delivers
Review: I simply could not put this book down. I just read for 48 hours. With this work, Neil takes his already considerable talents from the comic spaces and delivers his first full length novel. It works brilliantly. He tackles big ideas in this novel and it works well. I have never read any of Neil's other work but was quickly drawn into this one. The story (on the surface) involves a Shadow Moon, serving three years in prision. He is sprung a few days early only to learn that his wife has been killed in an acident. He meets a strange character on the plane to the funeral, named Wednesday. He offers Shadow a job and with nothing to lose he accepts. But he finds that working for Wednesday is not at all what it seams. The two embarg on a wild road trip across the country where Shadow is introduced to a whole host of really interesting and fascinating characters, who turn out to be old Gods, stuck here in America, forgotten. They all seem to know more about Shadow than he does himself. This is also where the book takes on a wonderful additional quality. On one hand, a large part of the book conveys a wonderful description of back-roads middle America and small towns and the people that populate them. There are great descriptions of roadside attractions. All along, Shadow constantly hears that "a storm is coming." It soon becomes clear that the storm is nothing less than a war between the old Gods who followed their faithful believers from Europe and the new Gods of the 20th Century: the god of the TV, the god of the Internet. There is a very bizare and fully scene with the god of television, taking the form of Lucy Ricardo. Neil's talents at keeping this all together are formidable. In short, this is brilliant. With this work, Neil moves from the top ranks of comic book narative writers into a new realm where he shows us that can create his own myths and deliver a as a full fledged novel writer.
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Summary: Strange Truths
Review: There are a couple of writers out there that have a tendency to twist your imaginations. They make you see the world in a way that while totally consistant with what you've seen so far, illuminates it in a totally different way. Kinda like standing in one place and looking west at Noon and Sunset. The landscape is the same but the picture is totally different. American Gods is a look at a country that doesn't believe in very much, or at least not for very long. It's a place that doesn't really believe in it's own past, forgetting it for the sake of convenience. It encompases the Melting Pot of America and the sad truth to what becomes of the beliefs brought over to this country. Neil Gaiman does a marvelous job mixing and matching the past, the legends and the truths that have made this country what it is. An all around excellent read. Highly Recommended.
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Summary: Engaging and Smart - But Not the Triumph that was Neverwhere
Review: Neil Gaiman has been on my list of "must-buys" since before his Sandman days. His writing style has always been right on target and his lyrical myths have fascinated me from the word go. American Gods is another step on his way of becoming a household name -- however, he veers off course late in the game and never seems to get back on track. The characters stick with you but not quite in the same way as Door or the Marquis de Carabas did in Neverwhere. As far as stories go, the two books couldn't be more dissimilar, but American Gods take a hard right into Stephen King territory about 200 pages in and never veers back into Gaimanland. All in all, it's an excellent book by an excellent author, but compared to his other works, it falls short -- Sorry. But a mediocre book for Gaiman is heads and tails above the greatest book by most anyone else. Buy it - Enjoy it - Read Stardust - Read Neverwhere - Be Happy.
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Summary: none
Review: "American Gods" is a superior achievement in fantasy. At once, vivid and surreal, intense and inventive, mythological and technological, bold and engrossing. Powerfully haunting and hypnotizing, "American Gods" is a novel that rips the cover off America, for a look seldom seen, rarely looked for, and the Gods that reside there in this much darker version of Kerouac's "On The Road", and Gaiman at his imaginative and storytelling best... Gary S. Potter Author/Poet
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Summary: A VERY ORIGINAL DARK FANTASY/HORROR NOVEL
Review: Storm has spent three years in prison, the only thing keeping him sane is the thought of returning home to his wife. Days before his release from prison, Storm learns his wife has been killed in an accident. Alone, Storm ventures back into the world with the goal of making a better life for himself.
On the plane ride to the funeral, Storm will meet the mysterious Mr. Wednesday. Striking up conversation, Wednesday proposes that Storm come work for him. Storm, not knowing what to think about Wednesday, refuses, but after serious thinking, he takes Wednesday's offer, even though he doesn't really know what the job entails.
As the two men begin their working relationship, Storm comes to realize, Wednesday is a man with a lot to hide, and his schemes will lead the two men on a cross country road trip that will have them come in contact with many twisted individuals... individuals with knowledge about Storm's past.
As Storm becomes deeper involved with We!dnesday, he will come to find out that his past won't die, and even his beloved wife had secrets.
Storm struggles to understand everything that has happened to him, and at the same time a war is being fought, and losing the war will change the world as we know it.
'American Gods' is a very hard novel to describe; at once it is road novel, while having gothic overtones. It is a mystery, with an offbeat cast of characters, that of which would be found in an Elmore Leonard novel, and still Neil Gaiman has maintained a fast-paced, entertaining read.
Although not for everyone, 'American Gods' succeeds on being a highly original, readable tale, one that is filled with myth, magic, and mystery that will hit the bestseller list's, and introduce Mr. Gaiman to a whole new audience.
A very enjoyable read.
Nick Gonnella
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Summary: I'll tell you what's really cool about this book.
Review: To be honest, I don't appreciate this book's story. It's not as cool as it's made out to look like. The gods are just a bunch of weird people who have a pointless war, and the twist at the end is the oh-my-god revelation it should be. Also, the development of the main character, Shadow, is rather poor. We're told practically nothing about what kind of person he is, so his actions, which waver between petty thug and big softy, are rarely understandable. He seems to drift from motivation to motivation without real reason. But, fortunately, as the book progresses, this starts to matters less and less. Anyway, the REAL cool thing about this book is Neil Gaiman. Yes, Neil Gaiman is the coolest part. Every now and again you get one of these moments. Interludes, flashbacks, and little side stories are what makes this book, and makes it GOOD. The story may be weak, but the storyTELLING is flawless, managing to keep you focused on the single central character and keep you interested in the world picture constructed. Gaiman has remained, in my mind, superior as a short story writer, and it's these short stories inside the larger that are the really well written bits. That's what's really cool about this book.
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Summary: Got me through a tough week
Review: Earlier this week, I got hit with an unpleasant medical diagnosis. Serious surgery involving sharp knives in proximity to my spinal cord looms in my near-future. None of the writers who normally distract me from my troubles were of any use: not Stephen King, not Jack Finney; Garrison Keillor and Bill Bryson couldn't get a smile out of me. And then, American Gods showed up. I'd quite forgotten I pre-ordered it. For the past two months, I have been in too much pain to sit for any length of time, but when the book came I sat right down and started reading. And was feeling no pain. Just my old pals, Awe and Wonder. That's the best thing I know to say about a book. It helped me through my pain. Thanks, Neil.
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Summary: A book like an onion-- layers and layers the further you go.
Review: American Gods is about, well, american gods. And american myths, and the infinite variety of people and places that "america" encompasses. This is also Neil Gaiman, so along the way there are significant coincidences, and coincidences-that-aren't, and coincidences-that-REALLY-aren't, and plot twists that seem meaningless at the time but suddenly slot into place so seamlessly that you can't see how you missed the significance the first time around. Misdirection is a major theme of the book, from Shadow's coin tricks to Wednesday's con games and beyond-- another characteristic of America (and of course gods). And then just when you think Gaiman's exhausted his bag of tricks, the epilogue (set outside of the U.S.) throws a whole new light on the events of the book. If there's a problem with American Gods, it's that you'll have to read it three or four times to get everything-- and it will be a different book each time.
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