Mr. Wednesday, trickster and wise man, is on a quest. The old gods who came over to this country with each human incursion have weakened as their followers have dwindled and are now threatened with extinction by the modern gods of technology and marketing. Wednesday travels from deity to deity, rounding up help for what will be last battle. He engages ancient Russian gods, Norse legends, Egyptian deities, and countless others who have found their way to America in the past 10,000 or so years. Shadow never quite understands what his role is in all of this, but he experiences visions and dreams which promise that he is far more than Wednesday's factotum.

The plot is unendingly inventive as it treks its way across the country. From Chicago to Rhode Island, and Seattle to the magical town of Lakeside, Shadow's journey seems to follow the back roads of America. The people he meets are gritty, and the gods are even grittier. Gaiman creates believable characters with quick brush strokes and builds vivid landscapes that belie their mundane origins. Gaiman, recently moved to the U.S. has invited us along on his own quest to discover an America uniquely his own.

This is a novel that resonates at many levels, it is Shadow's initiation quest, Gaiman's search for the American identity, a revisionist Twilight of the Gods, and last, but not least a captivating piece of fiction. The gods that people this story came with people who found their way to this country from almost every time and place. Gaiman has put his finger on once of this country's greatest truths. Every person who ever lived here has roots from somewhere else. We have crossed oceans and land bridges, on foot, and by every other means of transportation. Our culture has been created whole cloth out of the character and beliefs of all those people. Gaiman has managed to capture a bit of that vision and put it on display for the reader.

After his superb work in "Neverwhere," "Stardust," and the Sandman graphic novels, Neil Gaimon has established himself a force to be reckoned with in the crossover horror/fantasy genre. Now with his new novel Gaiman establishes his mastery in a remarkable story of quest and transformation as he comes to terms with his own vision of America. "American Gods" defies classification and invites superlatives. This is one of 2001's must reads.


The joy is in the journey   September 24, 2001
 55 out of 66 found this review helpful

I have read all of Gaiman's novels, as well as the Sandman graphic novels. I'm a fan of urban fantasy, and, needless to say, I'm a fan of Gaiman's work. I was especially anxious to read American Gods because a good portion of the story takes place in my home state, Wisconsin (home of snow, ice and Culver's custard.) I was not, generally speaking, disapppointed. American Gods has everything I like about Gaiman's stories.

The story opens with Shadow, the protagonist, being released from prison a week early to attend his wife's funeral. Shadow is a big man, strong in both stature and integrity. On his way home, he meets Mr. Wednesday, who offers Shadow a job as bodyguard. The pair travels the American heartland, drumming up support for a coming spiritual war. Along the way they meet a host of unlikely characters, includ and thugs with names like Mr. Town, Mr. Street, Mr. Woods and Mr. World. And not least among this cast of extremely interesting characters is Laura, Shadow's deceased wife who spends most of the book bailing Shadow out of tight situations. And rotting.

I docked the book 1 star because, in my opinion, the ending fizzled. Also, interspersed through the book were short stories that were removed from the main storyline. These were a nice break between chapters, and offered insight to 'the coming war' in other parts of the nation. For some reason, these stories stopped about 1/3 of the way through the book, and I sort of missed them.

In summary, I think that American Gods was a far stronger effort than the last book of his I read, Stardust, but not as good as Neverwhere, or Sandman.


An Unwieldy Mess of Ideas and Scenes   October 10, 2003
 50 out of 99 found this review helpful

Having heard loads of good things about Gaiman's work, and this huge novel in particular, I decided to check out this story of the decline of "old" gods in the face of the "new" gods of technology. The notion that the power of gods is derived from belief in them is a fairly basic one, and forms the underlying framework for "the coming storm", where the old gods in America band together to fight the new ones. The premise here is that centuries of immigrants have brought their native gods to the shores of America, where, we are told, there were no gods. Gaiman uses a few flashbacks to show these gods in action, which are some of the most effective bits of writing in the book. But there are three main conceptual flaws in the premise. The first is that the American mainland was hardly a tabula rasa, there were plenty of Native American deities in place (Raven, Wolf, Turtle, etc.). Secondly, does that mean that there are multiple manifestations of deities-one per geographic location? If the Norse gods die off in America due to dwindling belief, does that mean they live on in Scandinavia? Thirdly, the book totally ignores the monotheistic traditions which dominate modern American belief, which seems like a massive cop-out by Gaiman. Of course, this is a work of fantasy, and one doesn't look for total realism-but these issues undermine the internal logic of the story.

The story's protagonist is the cheesily names Shadow, who we meet right before he is released from prison. Upon his release, he is enlisted by the leader of the "old" gods, Wednesday, as a bodyguard. It's troubling that Shadow never seems that perturbed by Wednesday's creepy knowledge of his life, and it's one of the books central flaws that Shadow takes the most bizarre, X-Filesque events in stride, barely batting an eye. He's such a non-reactive character that it's a real struggle to care about him at all-which is a major problem as he is the center of the story. The two set out on Gaiman's attempt at that most traditional of American genres, the road movie/book, as they attempt to organize a coalition of old gods to do battle with the new ones. So, basically, the whole story is a buildup to this massive battle, which... Well, I won't give it away, but it's likely to disappoint many readers. More problematic is the pace, which is numbingly sedentary. The book drags on and on and on at a steady pace, only to culminate in the aforementioned non-climax.

Along with these issues, readers who know their Norse pantheon will probably spot the book's big reveal well in advance (Shadow's prison buddy, Low Key and his boss Wednesday, bear names decodable by a child with an interest in Norse mythology). This is not to say there aren't portions that are well written and intriguing, but as a whole, the book is an unwieldy mess of ideas and scenes. Gaiman clearly has talent and imagination, but sustaining a narrative of this length appears beyond him at this point.


the god of tedious things   April 20, 2004
 38 out of 71 found this review helpful

With such a big book it's almost impossible to know where to begin. So let's go for page one: "Shadow had done three years in prison..."

So immediately, had I not known (from the title, the blurb, the hype and the simple self-awareness that comes with being a player in the whole reading 'thang') that what we were dealing with here was a fantasy-type novel, I'd imagine this to be some trashy crime housebrick of a read. Down-at-heel drifter falls out of clink and straight into complex plot involving lowlifes, hot women, guns and cash. The sort of thing Jim Thompson did with aplomb (and, heck, economically) and everyone else has been trying to copy for years.

I mean, 'Shadow', what's that? Shadow? My initial incredulity at that first line stayed with me for a long, long time and it's not until p261 (in my hardback version) that a half-hearted explanation comes along. It might appear a strange thing to get hung up on, but if you're going to call your main character Shadow, you better come up with something damned good with which to back it up and "I'd just find adults and follow them around" didn't do it for me. In my world that'd make your nickname Odd Boy, not Shadow. Shadow? No, there had to be more to it than that, not to mention all the strange things (a dead wife being the least of his worries) that happen to him, and before too long I'm afraid that any shocks and surprises concerning our man's past or destiny had been dissipated by putting the big fella in a pigeonhole marked 'big revelation coming up'.

Let's break away from him for a second.

The basic premise of the story, that the immigrants who came to America brought their gods with them is, I guess, an appealing one. Why not? You could imagine, say, Aldiss or Bradbury or Michael Coney getting some mileage out of a short story on that subject. But a 500 page hardback? 600+ softback? I began to wonder what it was Gaiman was hiding. Why all the detail, why the endless referencing of the scared ancients, why the tortuous details about bloody coin tricks? I'll admit I didn't get what it was, but I sensed a con coming along. I knew we'd have the rug pulled from under at some point. I spent most of the book waiting impatiently for the twist, muttering 'get on with it' at regular intervals.

It doesn't help when you're losing faith in something, for that faith to be stretched, but several times we're asked to suspend our disbelief ever higher: there're the gods of course, then we have zombies, talking ravens (Gaiman has clearly read MacDonald's Lilith), talking dogs, talking fire, talking bowls of chilli con carne. OK, so I made the last one up. Where were we? Oh, yes: a supposed clandestine agency; a murder mystery on Walton's Mountain; a protagonist who knows Herodotus, picks up council minutes as a casual read, gets access to a library and then never bothers to do a moment's research on his boss who happens to be the Norse god Odin (?!). Oh, and he dies and comes back to life too, did I not mention that? By the time we hit the revelatory segments, I was rolling my eyes to the heavens [sic] almost every five minutes.

It seems, all of it, completely aimless. It did me no good at all having zero sympathy or empathy for Shadow (Shadow?!). I simply didn't care about his plight, or Wednesday's, even. I couldn't drum up enthusiasm for the nearly dead gods, or the fully dead Laura, or anyone. Apart from Sam, who at least referenced the Onion, so is fairly likeable in that regard. Everyone else could go to hell in a handbasket as for as I was concerned. Oh, and hey, they do. Kinda.

As has been mentioned below, the battle/climax is woeful. You build up to something for what seems like an eternity (ho ho) and then say 'actually ...nah'? It's incredibly lazy, startlingly so. At the height of it he comes up with: "The paradigms were shifting. He could feel it. The old world, a world of infinite vastness and illimitable resources and future was being confronted by something else - a web of energy, of opinions, of gulfs."

What? Sorry, what? It means nothing. Like Stephen Fry in Room 101, I have to confess that I do not have the requisite reservoir of splenetic juices to summon up just why I despise the misuse of the word 'energy' so very much. The ending, the denouements of the separate story threads, the pat conclusions, they're all so frustrating, and they're all run through with this dreadfully woolly language. Gaiman actually puts together a workable and efficient set of action sequences in the first half of the book (the plane journey where he meets Wednesday, the deaths on the train car, etc) but then falls down by talking about bloody 'energy' and simply finding Laura 'in a side cavern' (and riding giant birds, how throwaway and blink-and-you'll-miss-it is that? Eh? Come again?) This is draft 1 stuff, isn't it?

I understand that Gaiman used to write comics. Well, it seems he still does, he just forgot to include any pictures in this one.

Did any aspects of the book hold my attention? Maybe, and like I said, the initial premise is an interesting one, but the forgotten gods in the end are presented to us so quick-fire and one dimensionally that it's impossible to take them seriously at all. Like, there was a minotaur in there for a whole sentence, or am I mistaken? It's tiresome and dreary and ultimately Gaiman came across to this reader as someone who read some really great books about gods and felt he just had to get 'em all in.

My last word is reserved for the missing kids sub-plot. Hinzelmann didn't have a neon arrow pointing at him with IT'S THIS GUY writ large upon it, but he may as well have done. Outrageously transparent. Please tell me no-one was taken in by that?


Doesn't live up to hype   July 26, 2001
 36 out of 59 found this review helpful

I'm trying to like Neil Gaiman. I really am.

I appreciate clever, creative, inventive, passionate imaginations as much as the next guy. I understand how he revolutionized comic books with his Sandman series. I read Smoke and Mirrors, Stardust, Neverwhere and his kids' book about trading his dad for two goldfish (or whatever it was).

Each of the aforementioned books had moments of brilliance in them. Real, genuine creativity coursing through their veins.

However, as a whole, I've thought each of his books to be fatally flawed because of some plot, character or narrative defect that caused me to stumble and scratch my head. That doesn't happen when I read Bradbury or Leiber or Tolkien or Lewis or virtually any other of my favorite authors. But it happens with Gaiman. It's almost like he's trying too hard to be The Most Creative Writer On The Planet at the present time. I don't know.

I eagerly awaited American Gods and snatched it up the week it came out. I read it from cover to cover in about a week, taking it everywhere I went.

Sure enough, creativity and solid storytelling abounded. A few parts were gripping and awe-inspiring. Yet, a few parts left me wondering what the hell was going on, why he needed to add that particular part, why he worded it this or that way, etc. In other words, I found myself studying his narrative style more than enjoying a good read. I can do that with other authors (Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery series, for example) and not trip up. But I can't do that with Neil Gaiman. When he trips me up, I tend to stay that way for the rest of the book.

The creative idea that made American Gods is a surprising, almost profound one. But I don't think it was developed as powerfully as it could have been. The theme and focus seemed to shift from the idea of the gods battling it out, to the main character (Shadow) to subplots and characters that seemed almost too weird to even remotely pass for "real."

Please don't get me wrong. I think Neil Gaiman is very creative and talented. But I also think he's unfairly staggering under a load of critical praise and pressure that may cause him to think more highly of himself than he ought to...or cause his editors to not question flights of fancy that don't seem to go anywhere, or exist only for their own stake.

I certainly hope he continues to write books and share them with the world. Although I think American Gods was good, I don't think it's as good as the book he'll likely write five or ten years from now. Given Mr. Gaiman's staggering imagination and talent, THAT'S the book I'm waiting to read!