Gaiman's "American Gods" - Opinions? (SPOILERS)

Cafe Society
1

After all the praise this guy gets, I decided to give the book a try. I was pretty disappointed. The basic plot is fine, creative even: the gods of the old, pagan/religious world who were brought to America over the years by immigrants must do battle with the new techno gods Americans now worship. There’s more to it, but with a twist I don’t want to reveal.

Anyway, Gaiman spent 500-600 pages on this without really developing any characters - the protagonist, Shadow, is sketched out with an anecdote here and there at best; same with any of the gods. The backstory, explaining how this concept is meant to work, is all but absent (exactly how do the gods exist in the U.S. and in other countries at the same time? How do they live over thousands of years? I don’t need a Star Trek-level set of pseudo-scientific details, but something more than just “well, that pagan god is now working in a meat-packing plant”). For that matter, how do new gods appear? There are so many little things modern people worship and abandon - what gets to qualify as a god? And we are given NO insight as to the structure and breadth of the modern techno-god pantheon.

And the story’s structure is haphazard, including random interludes in places that don’t shed light on the path of the book, they just appear.

I finished the book simply because it moved so fast, but I had been inclined to want to associate Gaiman’s name with substance as much as style. This was all style, and not a particularly interesting style at that.

Your thoughts?

2

The initial concept intrigued me so much that I bought not one, but two, copies of this book. (I forgot I already had it and bought it again).

There is not much in the way of character development, and some parts are just plain weird. There were some chapters that I felt could have been left out altogether as I felt they added nothing to the book as a whole. I had no feelings for the main character, and IMHO, the story was rather anti-climatic. If you are looking for something to read purely for distraction, go ahead, read it. Just do not think too hard about what it all means.

3

Actually, I enjoyed it—I bought it as a “just for fun” read. I agree that there were some chapters that didn’t have much to do with the story as a whole and that some background information was lacking.

Out of curiosity, what did you all think of Gaiman’s other work as compared to this one? I felt that American Gods was better than Neverwhere but not as good as Smoke & Mirrors (haven’t read Stardust yet).

4

Personally, I felt that American Gods was Gaiman’s most impressive novel-length work yet, unless you count Sandman (which I don’t, because it’s really a big collection of connected short stories). Neverwhere was better as a TV miniseries than a novel, and Stardust was better as a graphic novel… but American Gods was strong on its own merits, to me. I really enjoyed it.

That said, I think Gaiman is a better short-story writer in general. Some of his short stories are some of the best I’ve ever read, whereas his novels, with the exception of American Gods, have left me wanting more.

I thought the story had depth, even if the characters at times lacked it. I saw it as an attempt at a modern myth, and it was impressive as such.

I rank American Gods with some of my favorite novels of what Clive Barker calls the fantastique – dark fantasy. Others include Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, Dan Simmons’ Carrion Comfort, and Barker’s own Imajica. I was very satisfied with Gaiman’s work in this case.

Looking forward to reading Coraline, his newest publication.

A little tangent, I went to a Gaiman reading for American Gods when it first came out. It was the second time I had met the man (the first was at a comic dealer’s convention about 7 years ago), but the first time I had seen him read his work live. It’s an experience well wrth the trouble, if you have the opportunity. I also have his recorded readings on “Warning: Contains Language,” but nothing can quite match seeing him and hearing him read a part of his book aloud for you. Some authors are terrible readers, at least when it comes to reading aloud. Gaiman, though, is an excellent reader, particularly live.

At that reading is also where I found out about the Books of Magic movie based on his graphic novel, which dashed my hopes of writing the script for the same myself… forcing me to shelve a half-written script that I had already been working on. sigh At least I got to talk to him again.

5

I liked it, though not as much as either Neverwhere or Stardust. (I don’t measure Smoke and Mirrors on the same scale, as it is a short story collection and I have wildy varying opinions of the stories in it.)

Like others have said, the book felt very detached, and I never worked up very much feeling for any of the characters.

Extra points for being set in N. Wisconsin so I could giggle stupidly and say “I’ve been there!” a lot. :slight_smile:

6

I certainly could have done without the interludes of people coming over to America. I know they were there to give some examples of immigrants bringing their Gods with them, but that could have been covered in a couple of paragraphs, not whole chapters. It felt like Gaiman had these stories he wanted to publish, that didn’t fit in anywhere else, so he snuck them in this book. That’s probably not how it happened, but it felt like it.

The rest of the book I did enjoy, though. I didn’t spot the twist, probably because I wasn’t looking for one. That was quite clever. Actually, that and a few other aspects made me realise that the book is more of a detective novel than fantasy. I didn’t like the side story with the murdered children, although I guess I wasn’t supposed to like it. The murderer didn’t really get a satisfactory punishment. Gaiman often seems to murder kids with impunity in his short stories - quite worrying, really!

Shadow wasn’t well-developed, I agree. In fact, shadow was an appropriate name for this character. His past was unclear, his abilities, nature, and status were all shadowy (I mean, shouldn’t he be a DemiGod?)

All criticism aside, I still enjoyed the book, liked the side characters and the world of the Gods. I prefer not to have too much detailed explanation of the worlds the characters inhabit, but rather have bits revealed in natural ways, and Gaiman did that well in this book. I thought the Gods are created by belief accompanied by certain (unspecified, but guessable) acts. We definitely needed to see more of the technoGods. The ‘war’ never seemed real because the opponents never had any substance. The character that had most substance was the dead wife, Laura, and I liked the way she developed. all in all, it could have been a better book, but it was still quite good, and worth a read.

7

I was dissapointed, in that, well, I expected something Sandman-good, but it wasn’t. I found the first half of the book bloody brilliant, but as soon as Shadow moved to the northern Midwest, it got bogged down. Plus, the book had, like, two too many endings. Howe’er, I disagree with most of the posters here who were dismayed by the asides about immigrants bringing their gods to America. Those were some of my favorite parts! In fact, after I saw him read bits of American Gods in New York on The Last Angel Tour, I was highly disappointed by the absence of a parable about maps that he read and edited out of the final book. Most of you would, probably, call it a distraction…

8

I thoroughly enjoyed American Gods and thought that the episodic interludes were the best parts of the book. They added a real sense of depth and history to the world that these characters inhabit. While I agree that character development was weak, I found the story far too engaging to be much bothered by it.

When I read Neverwhere and Stardust, I was just coming down from a wonderful Sandman buzz and I was left cold by both books. As a result, I approached American Gods with a little bit of trepidation but I was pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t reach the heights of Sandman but then again, what does?

9

I liked it, but I thought Neverwhere and Stardust were much better.

I’m still holding out hope for another Gaiman/Pratchett book- Good Omens was wonderful.

10

It was OK, but certainly not something I would recommend. For the most part I followed everything and most of the scenes made sense, added to the story. However, I didn’t understand the scene where the homosexual Jinn cab driver had sex with the traveling salesman and thereby turned the salesman into a Jinn. How did this fit into or further the story?

I also was disappointed with the ending.