American Gods: A Novel
by Neil Gaiman

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Book Reviews of American Gods: A Novel

Book Review: A storm is brewing...
Summary: 5 Stars

Was it worth the wait? You betcha. This is a truly marvelous book dealing with compassion, loyalty, relationships, deities, and how one man is affected by it all. This man is Shadow, a man who is in prison for assault. He is ready to be released and get back to his life when he gets word that his wife has died. He later finds out that the job he has waiting for him when he gets out is no longer there as well. Shadow is approached by a mysterious figure, Mr. Wednesday, who knows a lot about him. Wednesday offers Shadow a job as a driver who may have to do other "dangerous" things as well.

Thus begins a long journey that will span the entirety of Midwestern American. At times, American Gods feels like a travelogue, at other times, like a road movie. Then, there are quieter times where it is a mystery of sorts. Some people may have trouble with the conflicting "styles," but all of these sequences fall under the overarching theme of the novel. As Gaiman mentions in his acknowledgements, he is attempting to "find America," and the representation in this novel is stunning. You really get the feel for small, middle America town living, where every town is the "home of" a semi-famous athlete or a state champion in some sport.

The basic concept of the book is that immigrants to the United States (or North America in general, considering one of the interludes deals with immigrants from a few thousand years ago) bring their gods with them in their minds. Unfortunately for them, belief in them has been faltering for many years, and it's almost gone. It's been replaced by other gods: technology, media, Internet. Wednesday wants to fight back by gathering together the older gods and starting a war with the new ones. He brings Shadow along for a lot of these recruiting missions, and thus we meet some of the older gods.

The characters in American Gods are just wonderfully portrayed. Even the minor characters are well-rounded and three dimensional. My favourites have to be Ibis and Jacquel, two characters that Shadow meets in Cairo, Illinois. They're undertakers, but they offer him a unique perspective on this whole thing. Then there are some Native American gods who are also quite interesting.

Curiously enough, the most under-developed character throughout the book is Shadow himself. You don't find out a lot about him until the end of the book. You get snippets of information, but most of things you find out about him are through his actions in the book. You see a compassion that's hidden beneath the tough exterior. You see a loyalty to his friends, a sense of honour that even death can't destroy. I find him the most interesting character in the book, which is good because he's the central character.

For me, there really isn't a flaw in this book. I've seen reviews that complain about the interludes or the sequence of events in Lakeside (a small town in Wisconsin), and how they don't "have much to do with the plot of the book." I think that's missing the point. The book is more than the war of the gods. It's about finding values. It's about moving beyond beliefs. It's about one man and how he reacts to these things. I think the Lakeside sequence is actually the core of the book to some extent. The ending of the war is a bit anti-climactic, but I didn't mind that for the same reasons.

If you have any interest in mythology, run out and get this book. Even if you don't have an interest, I think you'll still value the experience.

Summary of American Gods: A Novel

The storm was coming....

Shadow spent three years in prison, keeping his head down, doing his time. All he wanted was to get back to the loving arms of his wife and to stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. But days before his scheduled release, he learns that his wife has been killed in an accident, and his world becomes a colder place.

On the plane ride home to the funeral, Shadow meets a grizzled man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A self-styled grifter and rogue, Wednesday offers Shadow a job. And Shadow, a man with nothing to lose, accepts.

But working for the enigmatic Wednesday is not without its price, and Shadow soon learns that his role in Wednesday's schemes will be far more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. Entangled in a world of secrets, he embarks on a wild road trip and encounters, among others, the murderous Czernobog, the impish Mr. Nancy, and the beautiful Easter -- all of whom seem to know more about Shadow than he himself does.

Shadow will learn that the past does not die, that everyone, including his late wife, had secrets, and that the stakes are higher than anyone could have imagined.

All around them a storm of epic proportions threatens to break. Soon Shadow and Wednesday will be swept up into a conflict as old as humanity itself. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought -- and the prize is the very soul of America.

As unsettling as it is exhilarating, American Gods is a dark and kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an America at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. Magnificently told, this work of literary magic will haunt the reader far beyond the final page.

Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book.

Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details that make this such a cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games and prostitution. "This is a bad land for Gods," says Shadow.

More than a tourist in America, but not a native, Neil Gaiman offers an outside-in and inside-out perspective on the soul and spirituality of the country--our obsessions with money and power, our jumbled religious heritage and its societal outcomes, and the millennial decisions we face about what's real and what's not. --Therese Littleton

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