American Gods: A Novel

by Neil Gaiman

After three years in prison, Shadow has done his time. But as the days, then the hours, then the seconds until his release tick away, he can feel a storm building. Two days before he gets out, his wife Laura dies in a mysterious car crash, in apparently adulterous circumstances. Dazed, Shadow travels home, only to encounter the bizarre Mr Wednesday claiming to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America. Together they embark on a very strange journey across the States, along the way solving the murders which have occurred every winter in one small American town. But they are being pursued by someone with whom Shadow must make his peace...Disturbing, gripping and profoundly strange, Neil Gaiman's epic new novel sees him on the road to finding the soul of America.

• ISBN10: 0060558121
• ISBN13: 9780060558123
• Publish Date: 2 September 2003 (first published 19 June 2001)
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Publish Country: AU
• Imprint: Harper Perennial
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 592
• Language: English

Reviews

I read this book in two parts, up to Chapter 12 and then after 12. It was really good and I burned straight through it in two separate chunks. I'm still trying to sort out all the little nuances and I had to go and search for whom some of the gods were but it turned out to be pretty good in the end. I still think I liked the Graveyard book better but this is definitely worth a read.

[adastra]

I've first read this book when I was nineteen. Now, at age 29, it was finally time to read it again and it was every bit as amazing as the first (and second and third) time. Having visited the US many times since I've read this book last, I think I gained an ever deeper understanding for its mythology. Mind blown.

[Ben Pick]

Much better than the television show. It blends the metaphysical with the real world in a way that makes the story feel larger than reality.

[g2pro]

Another book that is headed to Show Time or HBO as a series.

[empressbrooke]

It's taken me a few weeks since I finished American Gods to review it, because I'm not quite sure how much I liked it. Its tone is extremely different from Stardust and Neverwhere; it's very dark, dreary, and cold, and it's difficult to root for any of the characters. No one is entirely sympathetic, although it's not as if any of them have really done anything wrong.

The premise of the novel is that as immigrants came to America, they brought their gods with them, and as America aged, its people no longer had a use for gods and abandoned them. It's fitting that the gods are now bleak and run-down. Shadow, the main character, is recruited by one of these gods to assist in a war against the newer gods - the gods of technology, highways, and the future. These newer gods are especially easy to dislike; they come across as sleazy and creepy.

I think this one is going to need a re-read relatively soon. It's so much deeper than a novel about warring gods, and I think I was ill-prepared for it coming off of Gaiman's lighter fare. There are so many themes running through the plot that I think I might trip over them trying to sort them all out.

Definitely recommended, but approach it expecting more than just a story.