American Gods by Neil Gaiman Review

American Gods Novel ☑️ Recommended

American Gods Series Book 1

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review

Yes, yes, I know…it’s another Neil Gaiman book! What can I say? I’m on a roll. This book was recently recommended to me by a Gaiman fan after he heard that I wasn’t particularly impressed by Stardust. So I bought the massive text and began reading immediately.  It took me a while to get through because it is obscenely long but I have to say that I quite enjoyed it.  The protagonist, Shadow is introduced immediately. He’s in jail and waiting for his release, which is coming up…just a few days. And then his wife dies and he is let out early to go to her funeral…that’s when the weird stuff starts happening to him. He gets a job offer to work for a god…Wednesday or Odin.

This novel is about old gods and new gods and what our society values. It is a commentary on how we worship what is new and fast and expensive and not necessarily what is honest and true and old. It’s a common theme, how we humans poopoo anything that is old and seemingly superstitious. Gaiman does it in a new way though. He created a rich world of old world gods who are striving to maintain some hold of their existence. They need sacrifice and belief and worship but find themselves competing with the new gods of technology and t.v. Shadow seems to handle all of this information surprisingly well. We find out why in the end and of course it makes perfect sense.

I like the mystery and the thriller aspect of this novel. There’s a little bit of everything here: murder, death, sex, violence, love, justice, war, religion. The only thing that really creeped me out was the dead wife, Laura…and her many visits to Shadow. It’s unnerving when she comes to him and the description of her slow decay is just plain gross. But I guess that’s a testament to Gaiman’s abilities as a writer…he can describe the hell out of a dead girl.

Summary

Days before his release from prison, Shadow's wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Shadow Moon gets out of jail only to discover his wife is dead. Defeated, broke, and uncertain where to go from here, he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, who employs him to serve as his bodyguard—thrusting Shadow into a deadly world where ghosts of the past come back from the dead, and a god war is imminent.

Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life. 

But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and a rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself. 

Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined—it is a job that takes him on a dark and strange road trip and introduces him to a host of eccentric characters whose fates are mysteriously intertwined with his own.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...

ISBN-10 ‎ 0063081911

ISBN-13 ‎ 978-0063081918

Publisher: HarperCollins

American Gods Release Date: June 19, 2001

560 pages

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