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.

My first thought on this book:



This is a 2.5 to 3 star book max for me. I am pretty sure this will be my last Neil Gaiman book. I have tried two others (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch and The Ocean at the End of the Lane) and one of those was okay (Omens) and one of them I couldn't stand (Ocean).

I realize that my feelings on Gaiman and his books are contrary to popular opinion, but they are just not my cup of tea. They are slow. They seem intentionally odd and artsy. By the end, I just don't care anymore. I think trying 3 of his books shows I have given him a good chance, but now it may be time to part ways.

American Gods has its interesting storylines (that is why I have rounded up to 3 stars) but overall, I didn't see the point. I expected some really interesting stuff to happen between all the Gods and mortals, but instead I got sometimes boring, sometimes unintelligible speeches, or really odd occurrences that come out of nowhere and make no sense. In general, I am not really sure why any of it happened other than Gaiman spewed forth some really weird stream of consciousness (This was the same way I felt about The Ocean at the End of the Lane).

So - if you love Gaiman, keep on reading! But, don't fault me for not caring for is style after several tries, it is just how I feel and I don't think it is going to get any better.

In the preface of this edition of American Gods which is the Author's Preferred Text for the 10th anniversary, Neil Gaiman says that much of what is included in this version was cut for the original publication. He says it wanders more, but he wanted to include them anyway. I found that to be a poor decision. I felt that much of the book was filler, and while entertaining on its own, added very little to the core of the story.

"What is the core of the story?" you ask. We follow a man conveniently named Shadow who, after getting released from jail, gets swept up in an 'adventure' (I'm skeptical to call it such because it feels more like a pilgrimage or nomadic wandering) with some American Gods. Shadow is himself a shadow of a real person: he has little personality, he follows blindly much of what he is told to do, and ultimately he doesn't really show up as a character until the stage lights are blinding on him and he has no other option but to perform. He's a likeable enough guy, but not memorable. I did enjoy his interaction with other people though, and there were certain parts where I pitied the guy, but never fully empathized.

The story, like I mentioned above, wanders. It takes you all across America, to its forgotten places. But the structure of the story wanders as well. There are interludes and 'Coming to America' chapters--they tell one-off stories of the different ways immigrants bring their gods to America, and there are random conversations thrust in here or there that are meant to bring a greater scope to the story. But in the end it's a pretty straightforward story of Shadow and his involvement with the gods.

My main complaint was really the length of the novel. There were, in my opinion, many unnecessary or at least unnecessarily long portions that could've been cut (and probably were in the original). I was a bit frustrated in the middle because, while Shadow is learning everything as he goes, so are you. And that doesn't lend itself to a very forward-moving plot. You are just as confused by and unsure of what is going as Shadow himself.

I've come to realize I'm more a fan of Gaiman's middle grade & children's books. When he fully commits to fantasy, I enjoy it much more. But the blending of fantasy with a sort of didactic analysis of American culture didn't really work for me in this instance.

This book (in a very round about way) taught me what good literature is. My mother was telling me about this book, and commented that it is good literature. Now, I was surprised to hear this because Neil Gaiman is usually a nonstop sex and violence party of disaffected goth teenager fantasy. Furthermore, I didn't really believe in good literature. I had had so much obvious bull-plop literary analysis crammed down my throat in high school (A high school teacher once said to our class "In the Great Gatsby, green means go, FOR SEX!") I'm a logical type of dude, and such literary analysis seemed like wildly speculative and unfounded pondering. So I asked my mom, what makes good literature and she said two things make good literature:

(1) Language must be used in an artistic way.
(2) There must be serious themes or metaphors in the work.

And this, for the first time ever, made literature make sense to me.

By this metric, American Gods is good literature. This book is very well written. The language is complex but it flows well and reads easily. The description is deep and enveloping, but does not make the reading labored.

This book is about how the old gods, brought to America in the myth and beliefs of immigrants for thousands of years, are alive on the fringes of our society. Our culture has no time for them, and they wither and grow old in the lack of worship. These gods, such as Anansi, Easter, and The Queen of Sheba, can practice magic; but they are relegated to the position of grifters, criminals, con men, and prostitutes. Meanwhile, the new gods, gods of technology, internet, wall street, and media are becoming strong and want to kill off the old gods. This book is the story of their war.

Of course, the book is rife with themes and metaphors about religion and America in general. And everyone has a take on what it all means. You can read many people here on Good Reads' take on it. You can read mine below, I don't want to affect your opinion about the book if you don't want me to.

I read this book because my mom recommended it, because I like Neil Gaiman, and because I wanted to see what it was all about.

WARNING THEMATIC DISCOVERY SPOILER (could ruin the fun, as unwrapping the metaphor of this book is as fun if not more so than discovering the plot.)

I think that this book is about the cultural shift in America that has been occurring over the last quarter century. The specific cultural shift of which I speak is the shift to a country wide homogeneous culture. Mom and Pop stores have been giving way to Walmart. Local restaurants give way to McDonald's, Subway, Olive Garden, or the Cheese Cake Factory. Local television stations are no longer watched in favor of Digital Cable or Satellite Television. Local Radio stations are bought up by clear channel and local or idiosyncratic programming is scrubbed in favor of nation wide play lists. Ethnic or local cultures are assimilated into the new American culture.

The old gods are metaphors of the ethnic immigrant and local cultures in America. The stories about how each god came to America are not about the gods themselves, they are about the immigrants who believe in them, and how they came to the new world.

The new gods represent the culturally homogenizing forces in America. They are the internet, the media, credit, and technology.

Repeatedly Gaiman refers to "the battle for the soul of America" between the new and old gods. This battle represents the assimilation of the American people into the new homogeneous culture and how this causes us to for go our ethnic backgrounds.

A stunning novel and a celebration of multicultural society, in which (almost) every American descends from once-foreign settlers. The gods are unscrupulous, violent, and often feckless, but adapted to a distinct, contemporary American setting, where their mishaps and debauchery is enrapturing.

Nothing engaging about the way this is written so I'm abandoning it at pg 220. If there's no artistry in the writing any story will just thump and blunder along in heavy mud-caked boots.

The best interpretation of what ancient gods could look like in modern society

Usurpers of the throne
A company goes bankrupt, a human dies, and a god without any believers… rebrands her/himself, vanishes, goes back to heaven, hell, behind the big bang, crunch, rip, multiverse? But seriously, of course not, as long as nobody has interviewed a literal goddess/god, this remains an open question. Maybe they don´t even know it themselves and fear the day of the last dead idolator. But at least they are human in the one regard that there is always

A new business idea based on technological and cultural evolution
This is the totally mindblowing, forever continuable concept of creating new gods out of technological and social progress and manifested in it. Internet, biotech, social media, mind uploading, nanotech, war machinery, new ideologies, all fantasy, and sci fi concepts that are standalone enough to be an equivalent, or new interpretation, of the old gods for human stuff like love, death, birth, war, and the big ones like weather, earth, etc. The funny thing is, the more

Humans are losing the connection to their origins, nature, and the biosphere
the more destructive a bad god could be. Let´s say a god of war or mammon is the whole army or government of a superpower or all its conglomerates and megacorporations. A god of lust is the owner of anything pornographic in a time VR and AR are pimping and spicing already incredible 4K and 8K pornography. What I´ve heard so far. And depending on how good or bad Aphrodites and Eros's kinky fetish tendency is, One man's meat is another man's suffering style, the impact on a society, in this case even a mixture of hard tech and soft, sometimes slack, horny ape needs, is pleasure or pain. Play with the idea yourself, you´ll find incredible insights. Both fantasy and sci fi

Expand this concept in extreme detail
Imagine an incredible mighty evil or good magician or a Clarketech civilization and this game could be played until the end of time. And thereby also creating a picture of the human values left in these fantastic settings. That´s what makes, back to the topic, Gaimans´work not better, but more unique than his other also incredible pieces. They are a kind of gold standard for fantasy, but they don´t have this

Mixture with our current time
This is what makes both the book and the TV series something unusual for the genre, tinkering with the idea of fusing fantasy genres with a commentary on modern society that isn´t moralizing or proselytizing for an ideology. But instead letting gods do that work.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

DNF @ 20%

This book is clearly not for me. I'm bored to tears, and I don't have much hope of it getting more interesting.

I like fantasy, and the fantasy elements of this don't appeal to me.

I get that this is probably a book that thousands of people love, but it's not my kind of book.

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.

Страхотна книга за стари и нови богове, че и за обикновенни хора - техни маши, жертви или съюзници.

Когато я препрочета за пореден път, а това ще е сигурно много скоро, ще напиша по-подробно ревю. ;)

Сериалът е много добър, чакам втори сезон! Позатъпя обаче доста в среда дата на втория сезон и го зарязах…

P.S. Има и корав леприкон!

This a strange book. But in a good way. For those of you familiar with Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novel you will understand that comment. It is a trip through America with the main character of Shadow and his mysterious employer Mr. Wednesday and their attempt to find the old gods and prepare for the conflict with the new gods. More than that I will not say since it would be a spoiler. It was fun trying to identify which characters were which gods. I would recommend this to anyone who likes to read a different type of story and parts of it are quite thought provoking. If you liked Sandman then give this one a try and I think you will appreciate it, as I did.

3,5 αστΈρια

Το βιβλίο αυτό με έχει μπερδέψει,μια μου άρεσε πάρα πολύ και μία βαριόμουν και έχανα το ενδιαφέρον μου.
Τώρα τελειώνοντας το έχω ανάμεικτα συναισθήματα όπως με τα περισσότερα βιβλία του Gaiman.
Σίγουρα δεν είναι απ΄τα αγαπημένα μου αλλά θα ήθελα στο μέλλον να το ξαναδιάβαζα και να αποφασίσω τι μου άρεσε και τι όχι.