Title: American Gods
Author: Neil Gaiman
Series: none
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Mythology
Pages: 635
Dates Read: November 23 – December 11, 2020
Edition Read: Paperback
Blurb: 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.
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…
Review
It had been several years since I last read this book but for some reason I never blogged about it back then. Which is a shame because this book is absolutely brilliant.
The idea that all the gods of the world have been brought to America by immigrants is interesting in and of itself, but add to that the fact that these gods are losing power because their people no longer believe in them takes the concept to the next level. The combination of these gods from all different cultures and countries is so interesting and powerful. You keep reading just to see how all of it combines and weaves together.
The main reason why we don’t worship the old gods anymore? We have new ones to replace them. Things like technology, television, the Internet. Those are the things that humans “worship” now. The old gods, led by Wednesday, plan on going up against these new technological gods in a battle for supremacy.
And then there’s Shadow. Shadow is a strange character and was difficult for me to connect to, mostly because he mostly only reacts to what’s happening to him instead of being proactive and making his own decisions. That gets tiresome after a while, although there are larger forces at work that make this happen. Plus he is still dealing with getting out of prison and losing his wife, which would change a person. It still does make for an occasionally dull protagonist, but there is so much else going on around him, it doesn’t detract from the rest of the story.
Besides, my favorite character will always be Mr. Nancy. Always.
GoodReads rating: 5 stars
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Life With No Plot 
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