What on earth did I just read?! “American Gods” has a premise that couldn’t be simpler – gods roam the earth (or the US, from a ‘Murican point of view) and live off the worship of their followers. Firstly, those gods really need Instagram. Secondly, this is a self-contained tautology if I ever saw one. Be it Zeus, Jesus, the Tooth Fairy or your friendly neighbourhood gluten-free vegan deity, every single concept or ideology lives for as long as it gets attention. Or basically until you grow out of it. Can you really base an entire doorstopper on the fact that something created in your mind ceases to exist once you pay it no mind anymore? I believe that you not only can, but that you could also make it a hell of a fine and intriguing story. Since every belief is essentially deeply personal and those gods are, more or less, very old attention whores, how do they adapt to the fact that my Odin/Zeus/Jesus is not your Odin/Zeus/Jesus and also not the Odin/Zeus/Jesus from 500 years ago? What about those deities who have lacked attention for so long that they have already forgotten their godly nature? What happens when the world learns about this sort of existence of gods? And since you can wish as many of them into existence as you want (granted, on a rather collective level), how does that holy surplus develop and interact further?

An endeavour of the kind “American Gods” wants to be – huge yet approachable, complex yet vivid – needs a healthy mixture of palpable characters, dynamics and plot, with a side of suspense and mystery. Two out of three probably would have done. This novel, though, delivers nothing.

Where you need (or expect) the characters to show demanding presence and persona, you get a protagonist dragging his feet from nothing to nowhere, with an overwhelmingly painful lack of any reaction whatsoever. Apparently no deep personal shock and no event completely impossible by anything one knows of the world is worth a response. Never a question, never a motive, never a second thought… Hell, never a thought whatsoever! And every single character has the same M.O. Nothing is ever weird or strange or confusing or infuriating and there is never a reason behind anything. No matter how much supernatural supernaturality you put into a setting, there is always a point where the characters, true to their world, ask themselves and others what the fuck is going on. Not here though. Somehow, everything goes and the rule of thumb is to tell, not to show. We are told that the gods are mighty, grand or intriguing, yet we see none of it. It’s kinda like telling everyone about your prowess in bed and then delivering about as much as a politician delivers of his pre-election promises. These sorry deities come down to coy extras scuffing around the set, because no one told them where or if they’re needed. Though I did enjoy how, between the reader and the other characters, the protagonist is the only one who doesn't know his true, godly, identity.

There is one attempt to create an interaction between the new and the old gods, a face-off of sorts. And the idea behind is actually good. Since there have always been countless entities of worship, at some point they will inevitably clash superhero-style. (Superheroes are, after all, a modern mythology.) This battle royale, however, is dissolved with Main Dude chanting out "Imagine". (I bet that even cures cancer in their world.) Remember the grand climax in “The Hobbit”, reduced to barely a passage of narration? Well, I was pissed beyond words about that. But here I actually passed from disbelief to denial to hysterical laughter. Yup, full Joker mode. In the end, the main conflict merely shows, even if very vividly, how this novel lacks even a most rudimental structure. Like odd pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, it consists of individual scenes (more or less successfully depicted, or just left hanging mid-air) and of idle running time, without ever constituting an integrated, coherent and continuous story.

Here’s the thing: This entire novel is based not on a literary work process, but merely on personal preferences. The author gives the impression of a stereotypical teenaged nerd immersed in pop culture and topics of interest, who pretty much knows what he’d like to read. But loving something doesn’t make you good at it. Knowing what kind of dress you’d like to have doesn’t give you the ability to sew that exact piece. Just like the thought “Whoa, that would be a great scene!” won’t give you a complete, intelligible, structurally cohesive novel. I once told my boyfriend how, in one of the next Avengers films, I’d love to see the Avengers hang around their almost destroyed headquarters, only to have Tony stark appear with five dozens of Ikea boxes, drop them at their feet and say: “Avengers, assemble!” Personally, I think that’d be funny. But that is one scene. And one scene makes no plot. Fandom and enthusiasm is a great basis for a genre piece, true, and I deeply believe that some of the crappiest adaptations known to me are in big part the work of people who were never really engrossed in the world they’re trying to recreate. But unfortunately (for both me and the author) grabbing a couple of beers and geeking out with your friends over some eighties space opera makes you no literary prodigy, merely a semi-professional fanboy. Gaiman should stick to short forms that allow him to go wild with appreciation for an already existing content or franchise.

The reinterpretation of myth has been a thing in modern literature for quite a while now. And when everything else fails, creating a flair of mystery by dropping hints about the various characters’ true identities is fine, too. And you gotta love playing Sherlock Holmes or Poirot or ripping off a villain's mask like Scooby Doo. But not like this. I had trouble getting over the blunt gimmick that was the dude who comes before Thursday, but the Slav Squad and the Egyptian Entourage proved that you should never dare to leave anything to a more sophisticated connection. It even went so far that one of the supposedly more significant revelations is based on a blatant and idiotic pun that makes Horatio Caine’s one-liners look witty. Look, if you’re playing a game of dropping hints, you can either go for the variant where the audience knows more that the characters all along, but then you have to forgo the “surprise, motherfucker” moment and focus on some other development. Or you incorporate neat little elements that your audience is well aware of, yet recognises them as clues only in hindsight (The Usual Suspects, anyone?). But you don’t go around waving a humongous neon sign trying to prove how cool you are by thinking of that trick and how cool we are for getting it. That pretty much comes down to that mandatory 12-year-old in every CoD game ever who calls himself DoomDestroyer and is very vocal about his frequent intimate encounters with the other players’ mothers. The pleasure of figuring out something is actually the pleasure of mastering a challenge. But setting the bar deep, deep underground means a patronising pat on the back in a completely distorted context. It’s like being promised to be introduced to a woman with massive jugs, without being told that she also tips the scale at 99,9kg. That kinda doesn't count now, does it? When it comes to gradually introducing hints and having the audience know more than the characters, I have seen an episode of “Grimm” that did it with more brains and humour. And being out-smarted by a trashy fantasy show is embarrassing. By creating a ridiculously plain task only to present it as a grand revelation, you’re assuming that your readers are dumb as boiled potato and lack even the most basic education. So, we’re making flat-Earthers and anti-vaxxers the norm now?

Formally, the novel is deprived of plot, continuance or dramatic conflict, the characters lack inner life, emotions, responses or development. Substantially, it tries to compensate for its lack of genuine ideas with condescending flatter. At the same time, it’s on the safe side with trivialised mythology, while ducking out of any real jolt by steering clear of any still effective beliefs. Both concept and writing are so deliberately dumbed-down, that they either prove how an active Twitter account doesn’t make you a writer, or they show just how much credit you give your readers. Anyway, “American Gods” is a sad ode to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Anybody who tells you that the book is about old and new gods, or about a man named Shadow, or about coin tricks, or about having one's head smashed in for losing a game of checkers, is selling you a line, because those are just details, not the story itself.

Much like any Neil Gaiman story, the devil is in the details, and you just have to resolve yourself to coming along for the ride, or you'll miss it. It's not one story, or two, it's many, and it's all complete...and you have just to read it, and enjoy it, and accept it. Or don't bother.

I might as well sell you a violin as sell this book to you, or pluck a synopsis of it from behind your ear and then deposit it in my hand, only to have it turn into a critical review while your attention is elsewhere. But I won't; you'll just have to find the magic yourself.

Every hour wounds. The last one kills.

I realize I’m in the minority here, so if American Gods sounds good to you, you should give it a try. So many people love this book that you should not let my review dissuade you. Seriously.

That said, I do not understand why American Gods is so beloved. The idea of new, “American” gods like media and technology is interesting. The idea of the old gods being forgotten, and that being remembered or forgotten is key to a god’s power, is also interesting. And some of the vignettes about various gods were good. But the sum of this book was less than the parts. The plot is painfully slow. And I don’t care if you’re a talented a writer as Neil Gaiman or if you’re a Stephenie Meyer: if you spend an entire book setting up two sides to go to war, there needs to be a war to pay that off. To do otherwise may be a triumph of diplomacy, but it makes for bad fiction.

In the end, American Gods felt like a very weak version of Stephen King’s  The Stand. I went in with high expectations, and was let down. Hopefully you’ll have a different experience.

I find myself shocked at the awards this book has won and the praise heaped upon it. How on Gods’ Earth could a book about Gods walking on the Earth among mortals be so pedestrian? Somehow Gaiman managed to turn a potentially cool premise into something boring. For those who love this book—and I know it is many—please forgive the sarcasm to follow as I blaspheme against the beloved Gaiman. But Gods help me, the more I read, the more I hated American Gods.

First off, while the premise sounds interesting the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. The basic idea: the more worshippers a God has, the more powerful they are. The plot: there is a building power struggle between the old Gods (Norse, Native American, pagan, etc.) and the new Gods (Technology, Television, Money, etc.). Okay, I’ve heard the ratio-of-worshippers-to-power idea before so that’s not so original. But it’s not a deal breaker. It has potential. Here’s the unique twist in American Gods that caused my political antenna to start twitching—every God (like say Odin) has an “avatar” of him or herself in each country. Or is it each continent? Gaiman’s not quite clear about that. Would there be an Odin in Belgium and Luxembourg? Or does all of Europe get one Odin who is different from the American Odin? I find it politically disagreeable to suggest that every country (or even continent) has different God-avatars. To make this the premise turns intangible political entities (nations) into strictly bordered spiritual containers. It’s parochial thinking. I disagree with this premise radically because I reject that people of a given “nation” are somehow bonded spiritually. Countries are artificial. Like Afghanistan. Like how we stole the native people’s land to form America. I ascribe to the perspective that while people should always be fighting for political freedom and better political systems locally and nationally, we are truly citizens of the world together. The premise of American Gods manages to privilege the people in one country as somehow being united in their spiritual energy, feeding the Gods only within that country. As a metaphor (Gaiman repeatedly feels the need to state that this premise is a metaphor) it fails. There should be no metaphorical boundary between my spirit and my sister’s and brother’s spirits in Nicaragua, even if we have different local needs. Further, I could go on about how old Gods (religious deities) are in cahoots with modern Gods like wealth and technology. Just look at the fact that all the evangelists support the party of the 1%.

Political oversensitivity on my part aside, the rant continues.

The main character, Shadow, was about the dullest hero I’ve ever read. For Gods’ sake how many times do other characters have to refer to how “big” he is? Is he a big man? He sure is big. Wow, you’re big. Apparently he’s big. Is he big? Oh boy is he a big man. Yep, he’s big. He was big and boring and one-dimensional. So pure of heart that it grated on me. I found the majority of his dialogue to be trite and conventional. He struck me throughout as a pawn of the author (and yes he was a pawn of the Gods, too) more than a real being. His words were missing that spark of believability to bring the character to life. I didn’t even believe his repeated sleight-of-hand behavior. It felt like a character trait on a chart that Gaiman could pull out every couple of chapters. And when it came to the other God characters? I just wasn’t feelin’ it. They seemed phony as all get-out. I did not find his representation of them credible. I think my reaction to their characterizations were primarily due to a reaction to mediocre dialogue. The dialogue wasn’t awful, but I found it to be consistently off—slightly awkward, slightly unnatural, subtly stilted.

Most of the story was told in very close third person from Shadow’s point-of-view. But every once in a while, Gaiman would throw in a chapter from another character’s point-of-view. These chapters read in some ways like short stories inserted into the novel to expurgate some backstory, elucidate the God/worshipper premise in more detail, or delve into a side character. I find such techniques utterly amateurish. One or two “interludes” in a book might be acceptable but to have an entire story driving in a close third person POV and then jump into another character because you can’t “explain something” from the primary POV is cheap. It’s an easy out. I react badly when authors feel the need to “explain things” to begin with. And to interrupt the flow of the structure you’ve created to do so pisses me off. It made me feel as though Gaiman were talking down to me as the reader, like I was a little kid who didn’t get it. Or like his storytelling just wasn’t good enough to tell the story without jumping out of it to explain it. Understanding should come organically. Or else the POV jumping should happen more frequently, such as, every chapter. It’s all about rhythm of storytelling.

Swathes of American Gods were just plain boring. About 2/3 of the way through I started skipping whole paragraphs, then pages to get to plot events. All the stuff between the plot events was trying my patience. Shadow spends a great deal of time stuck in a small town in northern Wisconsin, meeting all these good-hearted locals and exploring bits of small-town life. I felt like I was stuck in a small town in northern Wisconsin during the winter the whole time. I’m like—this is not freaking Housekeeping and Gaiman sure ain’t Marilynne Robinson. He does not have the writing chops to pull off an intimate look at real small-town life.

Modest spoiler: The entire chapter where the old Gods meet the new Gods in truce made no logical sense. Even if the place they met was neutral due to its magical qualities, the new Gods simply had to track the trucks when the old Gods drove off and bomb the hell out of them. It was just this weird excuse to have some conversations between the old and new, between Shadow and the new Gods. And to get that body back. Contrived.

Oh yeah, and if you tell me over and over again that a war is coming, a big, big, big fucking war is coming, then you better give me a big fucking war. Guess what? What do you think?

Big spoiler here: Let me see if I can summarize the speech at the climax, which prevented the war from happening. Shadow finds out that his father set up the war all for his own gain. So he goes in front of all the Gods … what is he going to say? How is he going to stop this horrendous war from occurring? What could he possibly say?!?! Well, he proceeds to explain to them that his father set up the war all for his own gain. Wow. I can’t believe he pulled that off. Except by just explaining it. Which he did. Great. Thrilling.

By the end, I was ready to shoot American Gods but I had to wade through an epilogue and a postscript. It was like a pimple on top of a wart. But I guess I’m not surprised that he wanted to tie up loose ends after the climax because he couldn’t figure out how to do it during the story itself. Bah.

I viscerally disliked this book. I think it’s because as a whole it felt emotionally manipulative. Such a charge could have been avoided with living, breathing characters. But despite the transparent planning and plotting, none of it rang true. Even Fantasy characters need to feel real. These didn’t.

I finished American Gods two weeks ago and I postponed writing a review as I was trying to come up with something smart to match the book. Obviously, as always when I struggle too much, nothing comes to min. I will just let my heart do the talking, then.

Neil Gaiman is a genius. There is something magical about his writing that enwraps me every time I open the pages of his creations. Maybe it is the way he combines action, mystery, mythology, mysticism, surreal, together with life lessons and harsh truths. His fantasy is different from everything else I read of this genre, weird, disturbing but amazing.

I was awed by the idea of the book. Gods being brought to America by the migrants who believed in them. As the next generations believe less and less in them, the Old Gods loose their power and are forced to live as ordinary people, struggling to make a living. New gods appear (technology, media) to replace the old ones but in the end, as America evolves, they will become obsolete as well.

Although people say that this is Neil Gaiman’s masterpiece I enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane  more. One problem for me in this novel was that I could not connect with the characters, especially with Shadow. This was probably due to the way the character was constructed, breathing but not really alive, as Laura told him.

I will leave you with a quote that touched me deeply as it is so true, especially today when we experience so much tragedy around us.

“There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it too deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.”

This is the cover for the show. No, it's not about seeing the white buffalo, Ian McShane and Ricky Whittle next to that gorgeous old Cadillac in the full cover (which is why I'm using this cut-out). Can you see the question here?
It is addressed in the book and one of the central topics for the resolution of this story:
"Gods are great," said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. "But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return..."

One day, Neil Gaiman had the idea of two men being on a plane, with one being a convict just coming out of prison and not really having a place in the world (not even being in his seat on the plane but being bounced into 1st class). Shortly later, he heard about some American towns having cars on iced-over lakes for charity (a bit of a strange thing for him as it usually doesn't get cold enough in England for lakes to freeze solid like that). One day, during a stop-over in Reykjavic, he couldn't sleep and started wondering what happened to the old gods while wandering around. When he got back from the walk, he sat down, writing a summary combining all these elements and sending it to his agent. American Gods was born.
While writing it, he ended up being on a roadtrip and seeing Cairo as well as the original House On The Rock.
...
This is the story of how this great tale came together. Piece by piece. A bit like a patchwork quilt. Which is also a bit like what the country (the US) itself is like. An assortment of different people from different backgrounds with different beliefs and therefore different life styles, all coming together one way or another. Changing, adapting, mixing.
I think one reason for the way this story was written as well as what it depicts and how, is the fact that the author is from the old continent but is now living on the new one, being influenced by both.
For example, a real important thought Neil Gaiman once voiced and that is entirely true (I discovered this first-hand when I visited the US), is the difference between the US and Europe (specifically, England) that in England, 100km is a long way (in the US it isn't), and 100 years is a long time in the US (which it isn't in Europe). A fundamental truth that says a lot about the character of those two places.

The truly special thing about this book is the feel of it. I can't believe that I, a history and mythology fan, only rated this 4 stars when reading it for the first time. I can see the places that made me deduct a star, especially now that I've seen the TV show adaptation of the book. Nevertheless, this tale deserves the full 5 stars which is why I'm bumping the rating up now. It's so dense with mythology, 99% of it entirely accurate, and the way the author presents it and interweaves it in the modern setting is impeccable. Sure, many people may be overwhelmed or won't get certain metaphors, but that isn't the book's fault.

So what is it about?
Well, the main character, Shadow, is freshly out of prison. Originally, he just wants to get his life and wife and job back. However, life turns out to be entirely different and Shadow finds himself alone in the world, slowly but surely sliding deeper and deeper into a weird space between the worlds, led by the mysterious Mr. Wednesday who employs him as an errand boy and bodyguard (amongst other things). They meet a number of questionable and quirky characters that Shadow desperately (and unsuccessfully) tries to understand. Some seem to be on Wednesday's side, others aren't, and some try to keep out of the way. Then there is a clash with the opposition and a few life-threatening situations. In between, we get a look at different points in North American history when all kinds of folks ended up in what is now the US; from the Stone Age, to the era of slavery, ... And, of course, eventually, there is the big battle. After all, a storm is coming.

This book not only nods to countless myths and legends, gods and other mythical creatures. It also addresses many very important topics of today's world. And when I say "today's world", I mean 2017 as much as 2001 when it was first published! Immigration, history, lies and deceit, war, identity, love, human connections (platonic as well as romantic and in any configuration you can think of), the difference between existing and living, even the point of it all ... this book has so many layers, you can't even count them all. And still, it's never preachy or boring.

According to the interview at the end of this audio version (which was narrated greatly by the way), that was recorded shortly after the book was published all those years ago, Neil Gaiman said that many ideas didn't make it into the book or changed (like Easter) and it sure seems to me as if the TV show was his second chance to change little details, bringing in old ideas that were changed for the book or left out entirely, generally making the story more ... whole.
A lot of things that were changed/amended for the show are things I'd love to have in the book. Yes, the changes are that good (probably thanks to the fact that the author also worte the show's script). So for anyone interested in this story, I'd recommend to watch the show AND read the book as they belong together and complete each other (like in a great marriage).

I find it really weird how many American media products have the word "American" in the title. Obviously, this; a few weeks back I also read American Rust. You've got your American Beauty, American Ninja, An American Werewolf in London. American Psycho. American Sniper. American Pie, American Dad, American Graffiti. What is going on here, what are they trying to prove?? I really don't understand it. I mean you'd never get "British Beauty", "French Psycho", would you? That just seems completely laughable.

Anyway, I really didn't get this book. It made no sense to me at all. I mean it's a fun conceit, that gods are living among men in modern day America, desperate to regain the faith they once commanded, but I just felt like it wasn't thought through properly. It presents itself as being predicated on the idea that ‘America is a bad land for gods’ – this is something that characters keep saying to one another, moodily, that America is a really bad land for gods – and this is apparently why all the gods are now living hand-to-mouth existences as drifters or menial labourers.

Only – huh? Are we talking about the same America here? The one where 51 percent of the population think that humans were created by a divine being, and a further 40 percent think they were created by evolution which was set in motion by a divine being (leaving, as Tim Minchin said, a very small percentage of Americans who are right)? Is that the America that is supposed to be a bad land for gods? Do me a favour, it must be one of the most religious countries in the western world. I've driven through my share of rural Tennessee, where much of American Gods takes place, and one of the most striking things about these communities is the fact that there seems to be one church for every six or seven houses. God is invoked on the currency, on the news, by the head of state, and in schoolrooms every morning by little kids.

This is what is so frustrating about the book, because it seems like a brilliant chance to examine religion in the US in a cool and interesting way – but it doesn't. It either doesn't dare or it doesn't bother. I mean – if you're going to run with this idea that gods are walking around, with the more powerful deities being those who have the most believers, then where the fuck is Yahweh? I'm supposed to believe that Anubis is twatting around driving a hearse in fucking Cairo, IL. – despite the fact that no one in the history of America has ever worshipped Anubis – and yet Jesus doesn't make a single appearance? Somehow it's OK to play around with foreign gods that seem quaint or folkloric, but monotheism's off the table. It just didn't make any sense to me.¹

Instead, what we have to propel the narrative along is just a kind of comic-book war that we're supposed to care about. So although there were quite a few scenes that had me flipping the pages with engagement, there was always this nagging feeling that none of it really meant anything and that I didn't really care very much what happened to anyone. It doesn't help that the protagonist (with the dreadful name of ‘Shadow Moon’) is, for a central character, annoyingly passive and lacking in personality (although the goddesses he encounters still have a remarkable habit of wanting to have sex with him).

As for the writing style, well, it's fine, but it has absolutely no flair. There's quite an interesting bit in the Acknowledgements where Gaiman thanks many of his beta-readers and editors for spotting ‘stray and unintentional anglicisms’, presumably so he could remove them; this I think is something that contributes to the featureless blandness of his style. I'm not saying he is unentitled to this voice or anything like that – his wife is American, he lives in America, this is totally an authentic voice for him. It's just not one that has any character. It works in a kind of tab-A-into-slot-B way.

This is certainly not a bad book and it's quite readable – I think I'm just disappointed because I had unfairly high hopes, and I liked the concept, and I have a lot of friends who really enjoyed it. For me it was just a bit baffling and cartoony. In the same way that His Dark Materials is like a children's story for grown-ups, American Gods felt like an adult story for children. This is my third Neil Gaiman book (after Sandman and Smoke and Mirrors) and they have all been underwhelming; I think I'll just leave him alone now, since I'm sure they deserve higher ratings than I'm prepared to give them, but that's what you get when I try and squeeze in a review at 01:23 am in a foreign city when I still have another two hours' work to do before I can go to bed.


¹This "Tenth Anniversary Edition" includes in its appendices a brief section in which Jesus does, in fact make a brief appearance. This was cut from the original published version, and you can see why; it is very short and it raises more questions than it answers. The problem is, these are the questions the book should have been about.

(A-) 81% | Very Good
Notes: The concept's pretty brilliant, but the plot can be slow and plodding at times and the end doesn't live up to the build.

2022 comments :

This is still one of my favorite books, and while I can’t tell you if its my third or fourth time reading it (plus an audiobook listen on a road trip with my husband a few years ago), I always notice small new things in there that delight me, little details Mr. Gaiman snuck in there to reward mythology nerds, music fans and people who have driven around a bit in the US of A.

I appreciate his perspective, as someone who was, like him, not born in America: he noticed things most Americans would not have given much thought to, because of how familiar they were, and made them matter. Since my first time reading it, I married an American, so my familiarity with the often baffling (from a Canadian perspective) country has grown expodentially, and it has affected my enjoyment of this book, as I can now contextualize so much more of it than I could have on previous reads. In fact, I think this is the most fun I’ve had reading “American Gods”!

I still believe this book to be an absolute masterpiece of whatever genre you think it fits into, but I will concede that it does help to be familiar with Norse mythology – and other myths and legends to fully grasp the essence of the characters and their purpose. But even if you are not, it deserves to be read.

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Full disclosure: I love Neil Gaiman. I’m the weird kind of girl who gets crushes on writers instead of movie stars, and Neil is in a category all of his own in my eyes. I struggle to even find a genre to describe him, and I was happy to see I’m not the only one who struggles to label his work. Gaimanesque. There.

When I first bought a copy of “American Gods”, I think I spent an entire rainy spring weekend alone in my dingy apartment, leaving my pile of reading cushions and blankets only when I had to eat or pee. I just didn’t want to stop reading for even a minute.

This book is a sprawling epic with an intriguing premise: what if our belief and sacrifice was what kept gods alive? What if immigrants had brought a version of their gods with them to America through the strength of their believes? And what if the gods created by our “modern” way of life and worship of money, television and so on - wanted the continent for themselves and had plotted to destroy the old gods?

That sounded weird and fascinating to me, and boy, did Gaiman deliver! Of course, this requires a suspense of disbelief: some reviewers were quick to point out an inconsistency here and there… I can’t say that it bothered me in the least, to be honest. I don’t tend to read urban fantasy expecting rock-solid scientific explanations of all the surreal stuff going on. The staggering amount of research that went into this alternate world-building was too impressive for me to start nitpicking. “American Gods” is not a light read, and at time, it can be challenging to keep everything straight, but that is something I really enjoy. I love books that make me work a bit.

Gaiman has a way with words: he is dry yet tender and funny, and very, very clever! Just the name of “Shadow” for his main, rather (deliberately?) bland character, can be interpreted in many different ways: he is, after all a witness and a pawn, more than an actual player, in the great game of divine chess being played out through the book. A literal shadow…

I could gush about a lot of other things in this amazing novel, but I don’t think I would be doing it justice. I recommend you pick it up if you are a fan of books that will stay with you, that don’t fit easily into any category and that will make you think about folk stories your grandparents told you a little differently.

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Thoughts on the doomed Starz TV series:

I was so damn excited about this. Bryan Fuller is one of those guys whose vision and aesthetic amazes me so much, and I knew he’d do something amazing with this material! And frankly, the first season is absolute solid gold: the casting is so flawless that even re-reading the book, I can’t imagine the characters differently. Shadow will always look like Ricky Whittle now, and Mr. Nancy could never be anyone but Orlando Jones; Wednesday has Ian McShane’s amazing voice and intense eyes and Pablo Schreiber did what I thought was impossible: he made Mad Sweeney hot as fuck (the fight scene in Jack’s Crocodile bar, ermahgurd, why is it so sexy?!). So season 1: awesome, weird as hell, gorgeous, total home run. Then Bryan Fuller left, Gillian Anderson followed and things got… a bit meh. While the evolution of Media’s character made sense in a 2017 context, and giving Laura a more developed storyline also works quite well with the television format, the magic touch was visibly waning. As I read the book in 2022 I re-watched the whole thing and realized I had stopped halfway through season 2 and hadn’t bothered finishing it. I’m nothing if not a completist, so I pushed on a bit and finished the final season as well. It is still beautiful, and flawlessly cast, but it is slower. It explores some of the characters, like Technical Boy, deeper than the book had, and it’s a very interesting speculative exercise. For all my love for the book, it shows its age with that character, picturing him as a fat nerd who lives in his parents’ basement, but the more contemporary tech sharks are slick, often well-dressed and predatory in a different ways. Laura’s redemption arc and her relationship with Mad Sweeney are another brilliant extension of the original story – as is the conflict between the Ifrit and Salim due to their respective visions of faith. Season 3, sans my two favorite dashing side-characters, continued to unravel, despite the inspired casting of Julia Sweeney as Hinzelmann and the interesting turn Laura’s journey took, something was just not gelling right, and the few moments of brilliance were not strong enough to rescues the sinking clunker. It’s a bummer because the final episode sets up tantalizing things to come, but the off-book bits were not enough to salvage the series.

I simply feel that this series was a “lightning in a bottle” situation, and that Fuller was a big part of that lightning – but they tried hard and made the best with what they had. I wish he had stayed on to run the show from beginning to end because I would have loved to see his full vision, but alas… It’s still brilliant, and updated some elements of Gaiman’s work perfectly, but the shit show that happened behind the camera ended up sinking it, which is a real shame. The show does make one thing very obvious: this book is a folklorist’s story about immigration and about the fact that America kinda sucks. It can be gory and brutal, it’s also beautiful and thought-provoking and managed to distil important ideas into a great feast for the eyes. It’s also a huge bummer the spinoff series about Mr. Nancy starring the amazing Orlando Jones will never happen; I wanted that so badly…

If you are into such things, Shire Post Mint made beautiful coins inspired by the ones handled by the characters: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ShirePostMi...

a protagonist, Shadow. calm, collected, quiet, passive, cagey, a tough guy and a sensitive guy. his life has been about reacting and not impacting. he moves through his story as if through a dream; tragedies and betrayals and mysteries and confidence games, the beginnings and endings of hope and love and life - all viewed as if through water, as if these terrible wonders were happening to someone else. he could be nothing more than a pawn in life - let alone a pawn of the gods - but yet his passivity is combined with an inner strength, a gentle kindness, an innate decency. his decency is more than a trait - it defines him. and when he does decide to act, his actions become another one of this novel's terrible wonders. he is complex and completely appealing. one of my my favorite heroes in modern fiction.

a wife, Laura. dead before the novel begins. a living ghost, a revenant; aided by a magical coin. a sad and appalling and dreamlike journey. a terrific payoff.

a Road Trip, full of kitchen-sink reality, full of terrible wonder.

an old guard, the Old Gods. Odin, Anansi, Czernobog, Anubis and Thoth and Bast and Horus, Eostre, Kali, the Norns. the Queen of Sheba - strangely, now an Old God. their transformation into prosaic american emigres - confidence men and tenement dwellers and whores and jailhouse cellmates - is both a fun game of mystery-solving (guess the god!) and a rather sad parallel to how the world of the not-aged pushes the aged into their little corners, out of sight and out of mind, into a world of irrelevance. and yet the old gods are not portrayed with cloying sweetness - there is no filter of nostalgia or hints of some long-lost, longed-for Olden Way to make us love them. they are fascinating, powerful, often monstrous, entirely without easy sentiment.

a new guard, the New Gods. Technology, the Media, the Vehicle, the Men in Black. it's easy to put them all automatically in a nice little box labeled The Villains. but that's too simple; too instantly gratifying. the novel's portrait of these potentially repellent figures is one painted in broad strokes, lacking subtlety - but it is also a fair one... they sound and act like villains, and yet they are not. how can they be? we worship them on a daily basis. they are only evil if we consider our modern age an evil one.

a creepy subsidiary villain: a Kobold. he lives in a portrait of classic americana that miraculously manages to be free of condescension.

a Confidence Game, long-game style, played by two gods, with our hero as their catspaw. cleverly done by the gods. beautifully overturned by our hero. brilliantly pulled off by the author.

an author, Neil Gaiman. i'll admit that i have well-stocked reserves of love for the man, ready and willing to be accessed. his Sandman series is my favorite comic book, full of crazy imagination and complex mysteries and creepy villains and complicated heroes and terrible, wonderful journeys. so i was prepared to love this book as i love its author, to draw upon that deep well of affection. there were connecting factors that helped to ease my transition from dealing with my old god of awesome comics to this new literary god of popular fantasy fiction; namely his interest in unearthing and revitalizing the world's myths and legends - an ongoing Gaiman leitmotif. i was less prepared to discover that Gaiman is an actual writer! his prose is fluid, nuanced, supple, at ease with both constant ambiguity and you-are-there, detailed realism. both grounded and hallucinatory. the narrative is anchored by everyday reality as well as a strange lack of affect - a blankness of tone that is a good fit for a phantasmagorical road trip. and then it is capable of sudden, surreal flights of visionary madness, a grey-toned package that becomes a conjurer's box of magic. and then that tricksy legerdemain can just as quickly transform back into a soulful and emotionally honest portrait of one man's journey through various adventures, through his own life, to the end of it and back again. who could ask for more?

This was long and all over the place. But something pulled me in because I kept picking it up and finishing it. Shadow is such an honest character trying to stay on the straight and narrow, I really liked his character. Overall the story was great.

I enjoy the prose of this novel at the beginning, and the prose helps me to finish the read. It is a heavyweight novel perceived from the research efforts.

The setting is solid 5 star. The main plots are good although a bit slow. BUT there are many unfinished sub-stories. I thought them as sub-plots first, but without satisfying conclusion until the end of novel, it is more like a background stories for setting. For example: Salim and the ifrit taxi driver.

For the magic rules perspective, this is a soft-magic novel, not much explanation about how the magic works, despite there are a lot of magic in the story. For my own taste, I like more explanation with magic rules, the belief-system. For example, how leprechaun's gold coin could made Laura an undead. And I like the appearance of other Odin at Postscript chapter which actually made sense to me with the belief-system. I mention the soft-magic for potential readers who might prefer a hard-magic story. By mentioning soft-magic, maybe you can guess the climax ending. Sorry for that.

In overall it is a good novel. My final rating is influenced by the ending, so I put a spoiler tag again.  The story is a bit slow and has mentioning con-job too many times, you could guess the ending trick, not much surprise there, I am almost committed to give 3 star rating. But then the Postscript chapter gave a last surprise, so I added one more star.

I hope the TV show adaptation is good.