American Gods: A Novel Reviews

• "This Is a Bad Place For Gods..."

  
  By A1M4NJYP0WNL8Q on 2001-08-03
  Released from prison shortly after the accidental death of his wife, ex-con Shadow finds himself free, but bereft of all the things that gave his previous life meaning. As he bids his farewell to the fragments of that life, an eerie stranger named Mr. Wednesday offers him employment. Wednesday needs someone to act as aid, driver, errand boy, and, in case of Wednesday's death, someone to hold a vigil for him. Shadow consents and finds himself drawn unsuspectingly into a cryptic reality where myth and legend coexist with today's realities.

  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

  
  By A17QKC0GZCKFNB on 2001-09-24
  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

  
  By A1RAUVCWYHTQI4 on 2003-10-10
  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

  
  By A17NNPJQWTOJTB on 2004-04-20
  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

  
  By A10872FHIJAKKD on 2001-07-26
  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!
  
  

• Neil Strikes Again
  By A36R8BSSBQ7ACK on 2001-06-20
  After waiting several years for Neil's new book, I hungrily devoured the 400+ page "American Gods" in just over two days. The story follows Shadow Moon, recently released from prison, as he comes to work for a man simply known as Wednesday. Wednesday is a peculiar old man with a frightening knowledge of Shadow's past and an amazing talent of swindling people who introduces Shadow to many fascinating characters, who it is later learned, are all transplanted Gods endeavoring to hold on to life all across America.

  Gaiman explores the sacred power hidden in the kitschy roadside attractions doting the landscape of America's many back roads; their once glorious power waning as people worship more modern cultural icons and ideas. The sprawling story pits the forgotten gods America's immigrated citizens brought with them to the new land against the high-tech gods of modern living in a war for the very right to be worshipped. Shadow is pulled headfirst into the dispute and ends up playing a crucial role in the upcoming battle. The meanings of life and death, self-worth, spiritual beliefs, and redemption are all explored with Gaiman's witty intelligence.

  Gaiman's ability to entwine multiple plot lines with clever cultural critiques while maintaining fantastic character descriptions and an engaging narrative solidifies the fantasy/horror author's place as one of the world's best storytellers. Much more than a magical tale of combating Gods, Gaiman paints a picture of a melting pot left too long to boil, and a country who worships the next big thing a bit too easily and with little consideration for it's ancestry.

  Definitely worth buying, and undeniably worth reading (all though you might want to slow down a bit more than I did!). And while you're at it - check out "Stardust" and "Neverwhere", you won't be disappointed.
  
  

• Got me through a tough week
  By A1329787FTEBMX on 2001-06-22
  Earlier this week, I got hit with an unpleasant medical diagnosis. Serious surgery involving sharp knives in proximity to my spinal cord looms in my near-future. None of the writers who normally distract me from my troubles were of any use: not Stephen King, not Jack Finney; Garrison Keillor and Bill Bryson couldn't get a smile out of me.

  And then, American Gods showed up. I'd quite forgotten I pre-ordered it. For the past two months, I have been in too much pain to sit for any length of time, but when the book came I sat right down and started reading. And was feeling no pain. Just my old pals, Awe and Wonder.

  That's the best thing I know to say about a book. It helped me through my pain. Thanks, Neil.
  
  

• Decent, but NOT great...try Tim Powers instead
  By A3FGQTIDYN2G2V on 2003-11-13
  I usually don't feel the need to write reviews (especially of works I did not particularly enjoy.This book is NOT great and it will NOT make you "think." The protaganist, named Shadow (something I found annoying for reasons I cannot explain), is a one-dimensional, walking plot coupon...he does little but whine and wander from one contrived meeting to the next. Stupidgenius6554 seems to equate disliking this book with stupidity. I emphatically disagree. Disliking this book is indicative of nothing more than good taste. The dialouge throughout is terrible, as are the ham-fisted exposition and the one-dimensional characters. The novel reads like a comic book without pictures. Gaiman tries to craft a modern fantasy that challenges the reader and for that I give him three stars. However, the flaws are, as I have mentioned, numerous and very damaging. Also, the entire feel of the novel is ground that has been well-traveled by truly great writers such as Tim Powers and his "steampunk" peers (all disciples of Philip K. Dick, the master of modern fantasy...see "The Man in the High Castle" among others). In short, as a novelist, Gaiman makes a great comic book writer.
  
  
• Lock the door and throw away the key
  By AJQ1S39GZBKUG on 2005-02-14
  First things first. I rarely read comic books or graphic novels (nothing against them, it is just they aren't my métier), so I'm not biased to review a Neil Gaiman book -- actually I have never read anything wrote. "American Gods" was my first experience approaching Gaiman's universe, and it left me with mixed feelings. I know this book has won prizes and hype, but that doesn't mean much nowadays -- when prizes are rather political.
  
  However much I found the idea very interesting and thought provoking, I have to admit that "American Gods" is poorly executed and lacks a good editing. Gaiman seems to be the kind of writer who is dominated by the form of the book he is writing -- instead of he himself dominating the form. Due to his graphic novels experience, he seems not to give credit to his reader's imagination. The fact that a novel doesn't have images affects his descriptions, making the text over-repetitive and over-explained.
  
  Gaiman is what we could call a key-in-the-pocket writer. For instance, if he has to tell you that a character found something important in a room. He begins by saying that this character has a key in his pocket, then this person will get the key, introduce it in the key hole, turn it, grab the doorknob and bla bla bla... until he says that the character found a bos in the room. All the previous actions don't count to make texture or to move the story forward. So cut the beating around the bush short, please. This is where an editor would step and tell "Neil, my dear, let's work a little more in this text. You can thrust the ellipse. They can be effective".
  
  But, since Gaiman has a graphic novel God status, nobody seems to have courage to tell him how poor his text is. But we can't hate this writer. If on the one hand, he has all these problems with his texts, on the other, after boring you with pages of painfully useless descriptions, he comes up with such a brilliant sentence, that you feels like patting him on the shoulder, like a friend who has a problem but we are okay with it.
  
  But it is still something to think of how somebody writes a book with almost 600 pages and don't develop a character at all. Supposedly "American Gods" is a kind of quest that the protagonist goes through. In the beginning Shadow, the man, lacks personality and will. So, one hopes he will have acquired at least one in the end -- or that being in contact with Gods will change him. But not, this is not what happens. He is supposed to be an average guy, and that's why Gaiman made him so plain -- that's the only explanation. But Shadow doesn't have an average guy appeal.
  
  The narrative, that is rarely put forward, is fragmented and confusing -- in place of being epic and meaningful. However "American Gods" is a page-turner, it is never memorable. The over repetition and stereotypes character never accomplish much. I believe that Gaiman wanted to writer an allegory criticism the contemporary America -- or the Western World as a whole-- but he never delivers it. For one thing, he could start writing Americans speaking Americans, and not British. Just because he uses the word `carousel', instead of `merry-go-round' doesn't mean they are talking American.
  
  One of the best things of reading "American Gods" is that it made me enjoy Chuck Palahniuk's novels even more. Gaiman seems to have the same coolness of the creator of the "Fight Club". But while the American writer knows how to keep it short, moving and with a point, Gaiman is exaggerated, sometimes boring, and doesn't know where he is really heading to. He could have made a great book with "American Gods", and should start by locking the door and throwing away the key. Because, so far this is much ado about nothing.
  
  
  
• Ho-hum or Blah, take your pick.
  By on 2003-09-13
  AMERICAN GODS wasn't a really bad book. It was just bad in a plain sort of way. Built on an interesting, if not new, theory, it started out strong, but didn't have the gas to bring it home. Midway through the book, I found myself alternately bored, tired and disinterested. I sighed a lot. It was hard to finish.

  I suspect Gaiman threw all the pieces and characters together with no real ties to bind them. Many, if not most, of the characters had no real purpose except to provide clever dialogue. I counted thirty-six pages of what were essentially short stories places throughout the book. Only one of them had a character that showed up again�only to be run down by a limo.

  Throughout the book Gaiman builds our expectations of a great war between the old gods and the new. The storm is coming, is constantly repeated. The Storm Is Coming. And when the storm finally comes, nothing much happens. It's like a balloon that goes whooopthpthpth, instead of POP! And it's not so much that the war never happened, as it was the way it never happened. Gaiman pulls the proverbial rabbit of his hat. And it's a stupid-looking rabbit, too.

  Ho-hum ... or blah. I don't know which.

  I might have given it 2 stars if it were shorter, but I'm mad because of all the time wasted.
  
  

• It doesn't get much better than this
  By A3DE1IYJGU5HPW on 2001-07-04
  It's a rare author who weaves a perfect, creative narrative from the best of all possible materials, and a rare book that entertains, challenges, and entices from cover to cover with such a narrative. Neil Gaiman's "American Gods," the latest literary offering from the High Priest of the English Language's Temple of Original Stories, achieves exactly this for exactly that kind of writer. In "American Gods," the author of "Neverwhere" and the creator of the Sandman graphic novels fashions a story that fans will find distantly familiar, and new readers will lose themselves inside within a few pages.

  The book opens with Shadow, the main character and an almost Shakespearian anti-hero, walking out of prison to learn that his wife has died. On the plane ride home, he meets an enigmatic con-man named Wednesday who offers Shadow a job - and a second chance at life. With little else to do except practice coin tricks he learned in prison, Shadow reluctantly accepts and the two begin a wintery, midwestern odyssey gathering other characters together in an attempt to weather an upcoming storm. The book follow's Shadow's travels as he discovers who he's working for, what's going on, and more about himself than he would ever want to know.

  The journey involves dreams, altered realities, other dimensions, strange encounters, and myths and folklore from every non-American culture on the planet. As with other Gaiman work, there is a certain amount of fun to figuring out which fantastic character Shadow is talking to - and to figuring out where the twisting plot leads next.

  Gaiman's premise - that gods are physically created by belief and made manifest - should be familiar to fans of his graphic novels, short stories, and other work. It is this kind of creativity that sets Gaiman apart from other authors today; his stories are as timeless as the mythologies that span cultures across the world, and yet they are original and fresh enough to engage the reader on a primal and intellectual level. After reading books like "American Gods" and Gaiman's other works, one imagines he would be utterly comfortable as a bard or storyteller, weaving tales of heros around the fireplace late at night to ward off the darkness and cold outside.

  "American Gods" is just as epic as these old stories, and as engaging as a new novel should be. Gaiman is one of the most important and welcome voices in English-language literature today, although intellectual praise shouldn't put off the reader searching for a good story, because that's exactly what one will find between these covers. "American Gods" is a journey of delights that I can do nothing but recommend to any reader.
  
  

• Ambitious Writing
  By A37F1G84K35FCZ on 2001-07-17
  This is the first work by Mr. Neil Gaiman that I have read. From this point on he will be an Author that I will read when he again publishes, further I will backtrack to read his earlier work. The concept of, "American Gods", is incredibly sweeping in both breadth and depth, and had he chose, he could have used a few hundred more pages to tell his tale. I wish that he had, as there are so many religions and mythologies that participate, the book is a bit overwhelming.

  When an Author creates a new world from whole cloth or conjures a variant on the world we know, the reader has to be given enough reference points and background to fully get immersed into his book. This is the only issue that I had with what is otherwise a thought-provoking, literate, and intelligently crafted book. It was mentioned that one reader used a book on mythology as a guide, and when I read this again I will use the same type of assist. There are literally dozens and dozens of, "Gods", that are a part of the action. A few will be familiar and understood, a few more will be recognized with some general knowledge, and others are totally unknown unless the reader has studied the fields the Author clearly studied himself. Even when some of the characters are thought to be familiar, they turn out to be infinitely more complex than the traditional view the reader probably has.

  If the Author gave more background on his characters the book would have substantially increased in length. He is a skillful writer so I don't see why that would have been an issue. There are other young writers creating massive works of fiction, and they have demonstrated that it can be done without losing the urgency that keeps one up most of the night flipping pages.

  As I said earlier this Author can create and execute on the page. Maybe I am in the minority when it comes to expansive knowledge of cultural lore. I do know that if I had the understanding or was given more information in the book, I would have gotten even more pleasure from what is already a great book.
  
  

• A mess of mythic proportions
  By A2NMXZU5SL862L on 2002-07-01
  Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" is a skewed, surreal and ultimately disappointing revival of the American Road Trip novel. Gaiman's writing is evocative enough to drag the reader from chapter to chapter, and he builds tension nicely, promising the reader a finale that will not only explain the thin-as-dishwater plot, but also resolve the dangling plot points he scatters along the way. In the end, Gaiman seems in a hurry to close the book, and rushes through conclusions quickly, dismissing a few as he goes.
  The author does a nice job of introducing the "gods" of old into the modern American scene, but fails miserably to give any characterization to the "new" gods, and that comes off as a complete injustice to the reader. After all, the story is building to a climatic battle between the two forces, and yet the reader is not allowed a clear view of the purpose or intent of the "new" gods.
  Some will find this novel brilliantly plotted and clever. I found it thin, weak in characterization, and lacking a satisfying conclusion. I skimmed the last 75 pages to finish book, and regret the impulse buy that made me pick it up in the first place.
  
  
• Gripping. Disturbing. Compelling. Haunting. Engaging.
  By AMWSZ61FILX2J on 2003-03-30
  It is hard to find the words with which to accurately describe this unique novel. I was at times charmed by the beautiful way in which the lead character comes to life. That said I was disturbed from the outset at the strange and tragic turn of events. Rarely does a novel set you up so well with the first few pages.

  I would love to describe the story, and will attempt to, although this book may just be one which has to be experienced to be believed. It is somewhat a tale of a man caught in a battle of ancient gods from mythology like Odin, and includes bar brawls with leprechauns and such. The lead character is hired to be an "errand man" for a forgotten "god" trying to battle American society's new "gods" of television, technology, and the Internet, which are brought to life as actual beings. The author does such a tremendous job of weaving the story from the viewpoint of a man so deeply haunted by a recent loss and betrayal that what he experiences in the supernatural is almost taken with a calm disinterest. The story weaves back and forth with lightning speed between dream, reality and the supernatural, leaving a dreamy feeling while reading.

  Also dispersed throughout the book are, out of nowhere, brief description of other "gods" and events, which read like a rich tapestry of history to a degree where I was looking for footnotes. I will say this; Mr. Gaiman has an incredible imagination!

  This is a rather strange book, it is at times a page-turning, stay up all night to finish novel, and at other times goes a bit too far into the horror and graphic depictions of a Stephen King. Some of the more graphic depictions seemed to be unnecessary to the storyline. This should serve as a warning for those who cringe easily. Despite these drawbacks, I was hooked into the story from the start, and wanted to finish it as fast as I could. That is itself high praise for a novel. Well done, strange and overly graphic, but a well written and compelling story.
  
  

• The Bar is Lowered...
  By A2QQX700YYF7V4 on 2006-04-17
  Here's the thing, I can tell in the first 50 pages whether or not a book is worth my time. Two summers ago a friend recommended this and "Memnoch the Devil" for some literary research I was doing. Despite my sneaking suspicion, I decided to commit to both of them. The undertaking of this enterprise proved a disaster. Here's the review of "American Gods"...
  
  "Shadow walked to the end of the boulevard."
  "Shadow followed Mr. Wendesday."
  "Shadow picked out clothes before returning home."
  
  "Shadow does nothing until the last 50 pages of the book."
  
  The protagonist lives up to his title. If ambivalence is worse than hatred, then Shadow represents all that is wrong with the world. Okay, that's a bit hyperbolic, but you get my point: Shadow is useless. Unfortunately, so is "American Gods".
  
  When reading a book, I look for any of the following redeeming factors:
  1) Is the narrative prose artfully done?
  2) Are the ideas innovative?
  3) Is the story inspired?
  4) Are the characters interesting?
  5) Is the concept fresh?
  
  Any of these virtues will potentially redeem a book for me, no matter how awful it is. Much to Neil Gaiman's discredit, he fails in all categories. I only give him two stars because he employs HP Lovecraft's concept of "old gods" and "new gods" and the empowerment we bestow upon them through belief. Don't believe me? Read "Tales of HP Lovecraft" edited by Joyce Carol Oats and you'll see that most of these ideas were done better...70 years ago! But I digress. To be more specific:
  
  1) This is the biggest part of any novel to me, so it gets the numero uno spot. I can excuse uninspired stories ("Moby Dick") or slightly wooden characters ("Gates of Fire") if the prose is elegant and masterfully put together. But Gaiman's "Gods" is pretty flat and rote in its presentation. We see things through Shadow's eyes as a series of tapestries that flow past. There's no real revelation except what takes place in the moment and that's boring. Too, Gaiman is no wordsmith. Someone needs to clue him in to Dictionary.com so he can spice up the diction a little.
  
  2) Gaiman's ideas are (as I've already mentioned) borrowed from HP Lovecraft, as well as others. It's not bad thing, writers do it all time (more so than you'd think), but it IS a bad thing when it's not improved upon. As someone who has written novels about what takes place "behind the veil", I can tell you that his handling of gods (and their climactic battle especially) was fairly trite. It wasn't handled badly, but there was little to no creative innovation, and in the end I didn't really care who was winning the fight, even after the twist.
  
  3) The story more or less follows one man's rebound life after his release from prison. He has nothing, no one, nada and--much like the character "Nada" in "They Live!"--it takes him a while to start being proactive. In fact, the whole novel is him following (his name is Shadow, remember) Mr. Wednesday as the haggard rogue runs around on these seemingly ambiguous errands. This is all well and good until you get to the end and realize that not only does it not seem like a very creative plan, but whole chapters' worth of setup could have been avoided as they did nothing to further the story or the characters.
  
  4) Speaking of which, the characters are pretty flat here. We have the obviously scurrilous drunk father figure, the loner without a soul, the sultry woman, and a whole bevy of characters that never move from their one note concertos. If Gaiman's characters would simply do SOMETHING that contradicted themselves then it might be interesting. That's what makes characters intriguing: their lack of predictability. As such, whenever a character shows up, you more or less know right where they're headed...save one final sub-twist that is great but far too little too late.
  
  5) The concept is great. I loved it. Gods fighting each other over power and influence. "This town ain't big enough for the both of us." Very cool concept. Unfortunately Gaiman just didn't have enough creative ideas here to spice things up and give us something we hadn't seen before.
  
  The fact that this book one a Hugo both A) makes me sad for the state of sci-fi and genre fiction, and B) gives me hope that my works will easily garner recognition. The bar is lowered. Step up and raise it, please.
  
  If you want to read great macabre sci-fi/weird horror then buy "Tales of HP Lovecraft" (edited and compiled by Joyce Carol Oats). If you want to read unparalleled prose check out anything by Steven Pressfield. If it's bizarre, beautiful word pictures you're looking for then go with Milorad Pavic. Or if characters are what you want, try anything by David Sedaris. All of these surpass Gaiman's "American Gods".
  
  
• Gaiman's over-rated as a novelist for this one
  By AWGP4B4GTH9RZ on 2002-06-30
  After "Neverwhere", I was looking forwards to "American Gods". Unfortunately it's not his best work. Sure, all the cool stuff is there - new modern Gods of plastic and wire coming up against old ones of blood and trickery - but it's curiously un-compelling. The whole book feels as it could have been more cohesive. Many of the creatures and gods Shadow and Wednesday meet have little impact on the final showdown between the pantheons, and it makes the scenes episodic. "You know what would be cool? If they met the original Easter. And hey, genies are neat. I'll write a short throwaway scene with them in it." It feels like Gaiman just wanted to introduce as many different religious myths as he could. And he HAS done his research, there's no mistake. I appreciate how much work has gone into looking it up - it's interesting so see just how OLD the variations on our myths are. The problem is that they don't really flow into the plot, which is a bit thin as it is. The climax reflects this: it makes sense in its way, and it's not TERRBILE. But it'll leave you wanting something deeper, a little something more, especially from Neil when we know he can do better.

  Another thing that fell flat were the new Gods of the modern age. Aside from a few interesting scenes with Media not much of them stood out for me. The Deity of the Internet, for example, was ripe with potential. He acts obnoxious in a few short scenes and then degenerates into gibbering. It's disappointing.

  Good points, well, hey, it does have its cool bits. As I said, the research into religions shows and it adds some nice verisimilitude to the story. The character interaction works, and it has some lovely descriptive scenes. (The ones detailing the decay of Shadow's dead wife's body were particularly riveting) But in the end the flaws overbalanced the fun of reading it for me - It came off as a merely adequate piece of work, especially from Gaiman. Some more editing would probably have netted it another star. I wouldn't purchase it but simply take it out from the library.
  
  

• Bordering on completely pointless
  By AL8U087AWYP2Y on 2006-12-14
  Page 281 out of about 588...and I quit. I looked at the last 50 or so pages that I've read and ask myself, "what was the point?" Honestly, I have no idea. I feel that large portions of this novel could be removed in their entirety and the reader wouldn't miss them at all. I don't consider that terribly good writing.
  
  This book just has the feeling of pointlessness. What is the point? I have no idea. It's obviously not to tell an entertaining story, because the story itself is painfully dull. Is it about the new world of the Internet and television versus the old world gods or something? I have no idea, and at this point I really don't care. If this book offered some striking social commentary, or anything to that affect, it might be worth reading. Again however, the problem is that pages upon pages of this novel have no discernable content. Now, page after page of absolutely no progress would be fine if this were something like Foucault's Pendulum filled with other interesting "stuff". American Gods most certainly isn't filled with terribly interesting asides however. It's just filled with a bunch of words that don't really say much.
  
  Furthermore, there is not a single character towards whom I am not completely apathetic. They are flat and thoroughly uninteresting, and the dialogue is trite. Every idea in this book seems haphazardly thrown together with no clear focus. I would not recommend this work to anyone unless you simply need to kill some time and you've ready everything better.
  
  
• a solid story
  By A26KSBC3315A3O on 2001-08-03
  I've read comparisons of Neil Gaiman with Stephen King. The comparison, I think, is unfair. Both are good storytellers with a deft mastery of language and imagery. However, unlike King, Gaiman does a much better job at taking us into that which lies beneath. King only shows what is there (at least, what is there in his fantastic horrible world). Gaiman takes us behind the scenes -- even, in this book, referring to it as Backstage.

  That difference may seem trivial, but it is very important. It makes Gaiman's work more readable, more interesting, more thought-provoking.

  Gaiman loves looking at that which lies beneath, and "American Gods" is no exception. This time around, he examines American belief in the form of the gods that were brought to this new land but, ultimately, were abandoned for the new gods of technology and pop culture. We follow Shadow, an ex-con with a dead wife, through various American roadside attractions and through the living quarters of the old gods. We watch as the final battle between the old and new builds up.

  This is, so far, the best book that I've read this year.
  
  

• Way, Way Too Long
  By on 2002-06-24
  I'm sorry to have the only negative review thus far, but I've got to be honest. "Epic" is a good word for this book, but it is not a good book.
  There are too many characters, many different plots (which I normally don't mind, but in this case I found them confusing), and the main "plot" was (in my mind) not a plot at all, but a mish-mash of stories about old gods from various parts of the world and how they had lost their power in today's world.
  Some of the subplots (such as the murder mystery) and the inhabitants of the town of Lakeside were brief respites from the otherwise tiresome, dragged out, dark, and sad aspects of this book. I found myself not really caring about any of the "gods", and found the resolution of their "battle" anticlimactic. The main character's fate is comparable to Jesus dying for the benefit of others; then he is resurrected, but this event just doesn't make sense in the context of the book.

  I would advise avoidance of this book unless you want something long, dreary, and scattered. Usually I take books I've read to the library for others to read. This one I am tempted to throw in the recycle bin.
  
  

• oh god
  By A33GQJNCRF5I90 on 2002-11-04
  This is the first book I've read by Gaiman, and I don't intend to read another. I found this book to be boring, implausible, and mind-numbingly stupid. First of all, the so-called 'gods' have no godlike powers. They are just a bunch of senile old people who sit around in their depends eating boiled cabbage and complaining that nobody cares about them. Well, you won't care about them either. The main character, Shadow, doesn't care about anything. Doesn't care whether he lives or dies, and wouldn't matter if he did because this is a fantasy story where people can die and come back to life whenever it's convienient. Gaiman isn't American, and he doesn't know jack about America. Maybe he drove through Florida once and never left the highway except to stop for gas and cigarettes. He seems oblivious to the fact that this is a country that believes in God with a capital 'G', something that never comes up in this lame story.
  In a world where three headed gorgons ride flaming monkeys, I guess anything could happen. Not much does in this overblown heap of dung. 500 pages of sitting around, having dinner with your grandparents waiting for the 'clash of the gods', just to have it end not with a bang, but with a whimper.
  I could go on and on, but I don't want to waste anymore of our time. Don't waste your time on this award-winning stinker like I did. Don't waste your time reading any more reviews. Go visit grandma, go make some cheese fondue, just don't read this book.
  American Gods gets one star, and that's only because it provided me with plenty of toilet paper.
  
  
• A wallowing, depressing and ugly book with no redeeming value whatsoever
  By A2RCWJHOJ85CYU on 2006-10-07
  This is the worst, most depressing piece of fiction I have ever read. There is no real protoganist and not one singular character worthy of admiration--and after a while, their actions just become inexplicable. The author's soul must truly be an ugly one to have devoted so much time and energy to using his mind to generate so many casual acts of evil throughout the book. It starts out promising but by the time you get to about halfway through the book or so you get a nagging sense that your very own soul might be sucked out of you and permanently stolen by the heart of Neil Gaiman's darkness or one of his minions. Additionally, the characters' motivations change like the shifting sands, nothing they do makes any real sense except some inexplicable movement towards doing greater and more evil en masse like some sort of coagulating bacteria or disease. What is so creepy about this book is the casualness of it all. Unlike some of Stephen King's work (ie: The Stand), there is absolutely no redeeming thread here--no rallying or marshalling the troops to combat the emerging evil. It's evil in evil vs. evil surrounded by evil. All I can say is that this book is ugly, ugly, ugly. At least writers like Joyce Carol Oats and Joseph Conrad's intentions when writing about such things is to effectively demonstrate the ill effects of such darkness, but to make heroes of characters one should avoid is unconscionable. The choices the supposed protoganist makes make no sense--and you do root for him in the very beginning but you find he is just like one of them after all. I suspended my doubt and disbelief as long as I could but finally became so incensed by the audacity of both the literary critics and the author to pass this off as excellence, I literally stopped mid-sentence and chose to never read this author's work again. It's a shame too because he has allied himself in other incarnations with a truly gifted artist, Dave McKean, who maybe hasn't completely gone over to the dark side like Neil has. His association with Dave McKean is the only reason I even opened-up the book--and maybe a little because the title intrigued me. But it's unfortunate that the industry rewards "clever" works such as Mr. Gaiman's with undue praise. I've never so strongly disliked a book. Have you ever found yourself getting angry because you felt robbed or duped by a book? Well, don't believe the hype, this is the one to throw in the trash or disintegrate with X-men eyeball laserbeams before all your humanity is sucked out of you.
  
  
• Sacred fun on the road with Odin and the gang.
  By A1HS3BUBNZJJD6 on 2001-08-11
  How ironic when the Great American Novel is written by an Englishman! The absolutely elfin Neil Gaiman earns himself a lasting place in American literature with this novel. There are echoes of Hawthorne, Melville, lots of Lovercraft, and more than a smidgen of Kerouac here. While wonderfully providing quirky and fascinating personalities for all his mythic cast, the characterization of the Egyptian cat goddess Bast (a Gaiman essential from his Sandman days) and of Whiskey Jack, from Native American folklore are quite unforgettable. But most amazing of all, is the precise and flawless capture of the quintessence of the American character. Mr. Gaiman's scalpel-like intuition and perception of who we are as Americans is awesomely brutal and unflinching. Few writers born on this side of the Atlantic understand and portray it a quarter as well. This would be an excellent choice for academic study, but that detracts nothing from the fast-paced, page-turning excitement and sheer joie de vivre. Life-affirming literature and a rollicking good time --- can't ask more of a novel!
  
  
• Not for everyone
  By AV98923H37LRY on 2006-01-17
  I was loaned this book by someone whose opinion I respect a great deal. She loved it and thought that I would too. I read and enjoy a lot of sf, fantasy and horror. It's been a long, long time since I've read a book that I wasn't able to finish. After several months, I reached the halfway point in this book and then gave it back to my friend. Why? First, I was bored rigid by it. Second, this kind of book is just not to my taste. I know it's become trendy these days to recycle other countries' mythologies and put them into books, but to me, it's akin to baking a cake from a mix instead of from scratch. I wouldn't call that great cookery.
  
  
• Thoroughly disappointing. I really wanted to like this book.
  By A2A9WAXO70G1IH on 2006-04-25
  Ultimately, this book felt like an old friend letting me down.
  
  I have read a large number of Hugo and Nebula award winners. This book doesn't fit. I read all of the praise for this book. I listened to a podcast of the author talking about The Anansi Boys. This book is simply a let-down. You keep reading it knowing that at any moment you will be rewarded with a masterful Hugo-calibur novel, but it never comes. The book only becomes interesting right at the very end, and then just as your interest is finally roused, ...well... the book ends. The main character, Shadow, is apathetic and the author captures that beautifully by completely eliminating any character development or interesting action for Shadow.
  
  
• Too Many Gods
  By A2MAB5Q4XA209W on 2001-09-17
  This book surprised, shocked, disgusted, intrigued, but ultimately disappointed me. The books main premise of a fight between the transported 'Old World' gods and the new ones of modern urban America is a good one, each fighting for the thing that makes the gods immortal - belief in and homage to them. This war is slowly brought to light as Shadow, the main character, learns piece by piece about them, through direct interaction and through multiple dream sequences. Shadow's growing acceptance of the weird, different, and (normally) impossible is well handled, carrying the reader along a path from everyday reality to a final acceptance of a truly fantastic world, where our world is in some ways just a shadow of the true reality.

  Gaimam is at his best in the dream sequences and the short historical interludes that give a proper background to the arrival in America of many of the 'Old World' gods that are interspersed throughout the book. Within these, there is a distinct dark flavor, almost an oppressive depressiveness, an evocation of the not quite seen. Some of the descriptions of the odd-byway distinctive American tourist attractions are interesting and striking.

  Where this book fails, however, is in three distinct areas:

  The first problem is the sheer variety and number of the referenced gods. Most authors working in this area have confined themselves to using gods from only one distinct pantheon (Norse, Greek, Egyptian, Indian, etc). Here, Gaiman has referenced gods from almost every corner of the world. Few readers will have the background necessary to recognize all of these (especially not from the minimal clues Gaiman gives to their identities), and therefore will not be able to add each god's distinctive qualities to the portrayed character, thus making these characters near ciphers.

  The second problem is very limited character development for anyone other than Shadow and Wednesday (Odin). Even Laura (Shadow's dead wife) and Mr. World (Loki), major players in the final resolution, are given very minimal development, leading to little emotional involvement by the reader in the outcome.

  The third problem is Gaiman does not give any real 'presence' to any of the 'new' gods; there is no feeling either for or against them, as they nebulous names only ('media', 'credit', 'auto').

  There are some scenes of rather shocking sex and a rather cavalier, everyday tone to his relating of some very horrific events. These add a lot to the very dark tone that prevails throughout this book, but 'atmosphere' alone cannot carry the full weight. At the end, I was left with a feeling of 'OK, so what?' An ambitious, interesting concept for a novel, but not totally successful in its execution.
  
  

• American Gods
  By A2KOS7S5ZL9QSI on 2006-09-25
  I dropped out of this one by about page 200. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Neverwhere and Stardust so I was eager to read this book. Unlike the earlier works, American Gods failed to engage me. I love to lose myself in a good book, to feel like I'm part of the story; but when your main character is unaffected and apathetic to all that's going on around him,as Shadow is, it tends to make the reader feel the same way. I'm sure if I hung in there it would have picked up a bit, but I don't like having to work so hard to turn pages. Life is just too short and there are a lot of good books out there.
  
  
• Original Fantasy
  By A3R74PWB8GY9NS on 2002-01-06
  American Gods is the rarest of creatures: a literate, witty, mordant, and moving contemporary fantasy novel. Yes, its pace is studied rather than frantic, its tone cool and thoughtful rather than histrionic, but the patient reader will be amply rewarded by Gaiman's carefully plotted and beautifully written tale of Old World dieties struggling for survival and relevance in 21st century America.

  Gaiman has taken the essence of his gemlike short stories and blown it up into a genuine epic. Much more so than the entertaining but somewhat sparse Neverwhere, American Gods uses the novel's length and format to build power, even as its structure allows Gaiman to deploy a handful of strking short tales within it.

  Anyone who has enjoyed Gaiman's previous work, or the contemporary fantasy of Clive Barker, Tim Powers, Roger Zelazny, or Kim Newman, is likely to enjoy this excellent book.
  
  

• A waste of a good idea
  By A1AFA8UV791AML on 2005-03-07
  My only experience with Gaiman prior to this book was Neverwhere, and I found it entertaining if rather light and fluffy. With all the hype and positve opinions, I expected the 600 page American Gods to be as engrossing and entertaining as Neverwhere but with an epic scale and deep meaning to it. The idea behind the book points in that direction too: an examination of America's current cultural identity via a grand battle between the old world gods brought to America by settlers, and the personified forces of modern consumerism. You have to admit, Odin fighting the internet for control of America's collective unconscious is an interesting concept.
  
  So, between Gaiman's capacity for readability and the interesting premise there was a lot of potential here. But American Gods failed on both counts: I found it neither deep nor entertaining. The narrative structure is extremely fragmented. The digressions from the central story following the protagonist Shadow are long, many, and largely irrelevant. Even Shadow's story gets bogged down by the inclusion of people, places and details that are unimportant to the rest of the novel. I considered putting the book down several times, but I finished it in hopes that all of the anecdotes would come together to make some glorious unified point, but it never came.
  
  Perhaps this book would have been alright had it been edited down and not treated as an epic. Or else, written as an actual epic instead of a series of disjointed scenes. Either way, I don't recommend the book, and I don't understand why so many people do recommend it.
  
  
• Great Story, but Sometimes Shallow Writing
  By A3LF2DJ3LEGJ9H on 2006-10-15
  There are already many reviews that cover the story and characters, so I'm not going to waste our time with that. Instead I'll give my opinions on the actual writing and style of the story. Overall, I thought it to be good, with a lot of potential, but could have been much better. There were three things I didn't like, and which kept me from rating it as a 4 or even 5 out of 5 stars.
  
  First, I thought the characters were way too shallow at times. I understand the two main characters are supposed to be secretive and mysterious. I am not talking about that. What I mean is that there are many points in the story where the supporting characters don't react strongly enough and the dialog is short and flat. The end climax of the story is an example of this, for anyone who has read it. There is good build-up, but then the characters just fizzle and puff, when there should be a lot more emotion, conflict, and dialog. Thankfully this problem doesn't seem to happen with Niel Gaimon's later book in this series: Anansi Boys, which I liked much more.
  
  Next, The story slowed down and dragged on because of too much unnecessary detail and side stories. There was the large side story of Lakeside, and there were some times in that story that detail when it really wasn't needed. But overall I liked the Lakeside side story and thought it was a good addition to the main story. What I am really complaining about are the many "flashbacks" that try to give background information on some of the gods and spirits that the main characters meet. The flashbacks could have been useful and entertaining if they had just been much, much shorter. Do I really need to read page after page about a girl from the British isles who becomes an escaped convict and flees to America in order to learn that her people have brought Irish myths with them to the New World? One page at most would have sufficed.
  
  Lastly, The use of sex was just too excessive and improper. Now, I must confess I am a bit conservative when it comes to sex, but not a lot. I'm certainly not a prude. My problem here is that I consider seemingly random, excessive use of sex by authors as a crude crutch that they rely on when they can't be creative enough, and that dilutes from the main story. It seems that many authors, including Niel Gaimon with this novel, just sat down after writing the story and thought "hm.. maybe I'll insert a vulgar scene with a prostitute here" or "ha! A really random detailed gay sex scene here would really shock the readers! How genius of me!". Don't get me wrong. If this sort of thing actually was part of the main story and development of the characters, I would be fine with it. But when these sorts of things are seemingly inserted at random, without any reason for character or story development, and inserted quite frequently (almost every chapter, it seemed at times), then it really distracts rather than adds. Again, thankfully this isn't the case with his later novel, Anansi Boys.
  
  I would recommend reading this growing "world" that Niel Gaimon is creating, and therefore read American Gods. But I would actually suggest doing the same thing I did: read Anansi Boys first, then go back and read American Gods. You won't loose any information, and Anansi Boys is a better and easier read. Gift Idea: Because of the very graphic sex and violence, you may not want to give this to someone you are not sure is mature enough, just to warn you (18+ should be good enough, in my conservative opinion).
  
  
• Neil Strikes Out
  By A1ISNGEK5PG37S on 2001-06-27
  Often times poets are chastised for turning to novels, as are journalists, playwrights, whatever. So why should we reserve anything different for graphic novelists or more appropriately comicists? Gaiman's Sandman series is unarguably one of the finest stories to hit graphic novels/comics. The characters and plots are vivid and I found myself zooming through each book eager to read the next. As a novelist Gaiman falls flat, while the plot of American Gods kept me reading, the wordy descriptions and trite, sometimes down right awful metaphors, had me cringing with every page I turned. How many events can be correlated with a boy letting out piss in a warm pool, I mean really? While the characters were alive I longed for the dark art of the comic book to release me from the hell of prose that Gaiman has no handle on, nor talent for. This book may be the best argument for comic books to take a place as more than just a genre itself. Maus, Sandman, these are stories that would not be as powerful without the visual accompaniment of the art. Gaiman is a talented graphic novelist, he is *NOT* a non-illustrated novelist in any sense of the word.
  
  

• Neverwhere: A Novel
• Anansi Boys
• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
• Stardust
• Coraline Graphic Novel