American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Boy was this book looooong. I liked it, but it didn't wow me. I'd say 3 out of 5. I don't mean to put down this book because it was very good. However, it's not really my style, and it was beyond complicated.

Gaiman sets up an intricate network of Gods, all having come to America or having been created there. All throughout we know "a storm is coming," a war between gods of the old and the new.

We meet Shadow, our hero. He's a former felon, and he's finally getting out of prison. But then just days before his scheduled release he's sent out early with some bad news. His wife is dead. He starts his journey home and meets a man named Wednesday, who seems to know much more about Shadow than he should. Things get weird, really weird.

We find out that Shadow's late wife was diddling his best friend in his absence and both die while she is "servicing" him as he drove down the road late the night before Shadow's release. Then as Shadow concedes to the fact that Wednesday is his only option for employment he starts seeing some strange things.

We meet several gods, both young and old throughout the book and you can tell which ones are "good" and "bad" for the most part. The more Shadow learns the more he starts to believe the impossible is probably probable. Laura (his late-wife) is a zombie, trying to help him out.

There are so many twists and turns and imaginative dreams mixed with realities with webs upon webs of different people and gods to keep track of. Half the time I read, I had to think back and figure out who the heck some of those people were, or what the heck was happening.

There was that and the fact that even though Shadow was the hero, it was all written in the third person, so it wasn't really my cup of tea as far as style. AND on top of that there were lots of areas where I would have liked to have known what happened. We get lots of scenes building up and then you get "and then he told them" "and then she showed him" etc. I wanted to see/hear it too dammit!! It would have made it exponentially longer too methinks, but I think it would have been more valuable to me to see/hear those things than to build up to it and have to fill in a huge blank.

And much like Stardust, it was relatively anti-climactic at the end. I won't spoil it for you though!! But one shed of good light was that he wrapped up all the loose ends before ending.

I think it's worth while to read it, to say you've done it. You may like it, you may find it more complicated to really enjoy it. I don't know. But that's my glue and I'm stickin' to it!