American Gods

American Gods

 

Neil Gaiman

 

 

I think I was just expecting too much of this one.

 

One of the main things I liked about Neverwhere was the quirkiness and the characters, and this just didn't have the right balance for me. I really liked the main character, Shadow. He seemed pretty morally balanced for a guy that was in prison for 3 years only to find out his wife died while cheating on him the day he got out. I like that he just goes along with everything instead of questioning whether things are real or not (which often takes up too much of fantasy books understandably, I just liked the change of having someone accept the silliness). Other than that, I liked not a single secondary character. Half of the reason for this, I believe, was because each character had about 5 different names and I couldn't keep track of who was who or who jumped in where. I also don't think I knew enough about the Gods that were included in the book.

 

This one just seemed to drag for me and I couldn't get into the 'is this real or not?' and the cons of each character throughout. I hope I have better luck with Gaiman in the future.

**EDIT: bumping this up to 3 stars because I'm still thinking about the meaning behind the book. I appreciate the idea that we're leaving Gods behind as religion & science continue to clash and less Americans believe in any sort of faith. I realize now that the whole point was not to know who the Gods were because they were originally from different cultures & eventually were way less known than Gods I would recognize (like Greek/Roman). Now that I appreciate the theme, I realized that I enjoyed this a bit more**