American Gods by Neil Gaiman

This book was excellent in every way. The main character, Shadow, was easy to relate with and Gaiman did a fabulous job at garnering my sympathies (this was one of the few novels I've read where I've been genuinely concerned for the characters). The plot itself was unique and like nothing I've ever read before. There really is a sense of magic to the story, something I almost never see in other books. If their was any doubt that Gaiman couldn't write real novels, this book will erase all those doubts (he's really come a long way since his graphic novel days). I can't even truly express what makes this novel special, you just have to read it for yourself. I read this book four times in a row and it never lost it's charm.

Neil impresses me .. mostly because he mixes up cultural mythology within today's crunchy edged society. The worlds he creates for us to read are part of today's cars and buses and trains and roads and political states, but there is this new level, a new layer, extra overlay that is revealed. It matches with the real world we all know, but this extra level is well realized, quite believable and I find it sitting well on it's own internal logic. Not all science fiction/fantasy novel do this for me.

I read American Gods whilst overseas, lying on a horsehair matted mattress quietly sweating in the tropics. In the book I was comfortably lead through an American world with inherited gods from all the multitudinous races that make up America. Great fearful gods, little tricky gods, new gods, old gods. All powered by belief. You don't see these gods, because they are behind the reality you see. And Shadow, the character you first encounter leaving prison after being imprisoned for a crime committed, for his long standing loving wife.

Not all goes to plan in Shadow's world. A rug is pulled out of his large stable feet, he is put in new and uncertain places, he takes a plane ride and discovers that the world he always knew is not the world he inhabits.

I found many fascinating revelations of this world. I would not like to be Shadow as his journey is a rough one, but I would like to be Shadow as his destination (once the journey is traveled) is a journey of his own integrity in many respects, and at the end he is his own man despite the world of intrigue he inhabits.

My favorite character is Mr Nancy ... laudable ethics. Death is not final. Birth is not guaranteed. Godhood is not forever. Reality is so more than that.

Wonderful book - I probably read it 20 times on that horsehair mat in the sweating heat, and each time I was remote from my flesh and in the world of Niel Gaimans' ... it can't get much better that this from me.

Now all I need to do is track down another copy of the book, I keep giving it away to other people :-(

Thomas

I read this book about 7 or 8 months ago and only here i have had an opportunity to review it- It's not an easy read this book. Shortly it's about a black man named Shadow who after leaving prison starts working for mr. Wednesday, an old man who seems to be an exceptional and a proffesional cheater and swindler, but above all he is immensely interested in hiring our hero and keeping him always at the edge of some really weird things that are happening around them- you gotta read this one because telling you about it isn't fair.
i have to admit my reluctance to pick this one, but after a bit ordinary intro you are hooked to the very end- originality of this book is what makes it so good, and also you get a bit depressive view of todays small american day to day life, which is a fight for survival on every level of existence.