Review: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The good

• An interesting premise (minor spoiler alert): gods are real, apparently brought into existence by our beliefs, sacrifices, and faith. There are old gods, including Norse gods (e.g., Odin, the god of knowledge and wisdom, and Loki, the god of mischief and trickery), Egyption gods (e.g., Anubis, the god of the dead, and Thoth, the god of knowledge), Slavic gods (e.g., Czernobog, the god of darkness); and there are new gods, such as technical boy (god of technology and the Internet), media (goddess of television and pop culture), the black hats (beliefs in conspiracy theories), and the intangibles (god of the stock market—the invisible hand). These gods gain powers as people believe in them and die and fade away when they are forgotten. These gods walk the lands among us and fight among themselves to win our belief.

• Some truly unique, interesting characters / gods. Mr Wednesday, Czernobog, Mr. Ibis, Hinzelmann, and several others felt truly alive and managed to grab your attention in every scene. I love that they mostly act nonchalantly and irreverently: yup, we’re gods, we’re on this planet with you, we get drunk, we fight, we have sex, deal with it. Oddly, the protagonist, Shadow, was the least interesting of the lot, largely observing the world around him with little reaction, but that was an inherent part of his character, and worked well in the book.

• Good writing. Occasionally beautiful and moving.

The not so good

• Way too long and drawn out. I think Neil Gaiman had a little too much fun doing a deep-dive into various mythologies and creating characters around all the Norse, Egyption, Slavic, Hindu, and modern gods. While some parts of the story gripped you or were touching, many other parts were boring, or felt unnecessary, and I found myself tuning in and out. This book could’ve easily been half the length and still told the same story. I read the 10th anniversary edition, which apparently has an extra 12,000 words, making this only worse.

• I’m personally not a fan of stories with lots of vague, poorly-defined magic and deus ex machina, and this story, by definition, is almost entirely that. You have no idea what the gods are capable of—Are they immortal? Are they all powerful? Are they all knowing? What’s actually at stake here?—so in any given scene, there’s never any suspense, as you just assume some new god power will save the day… And if it doesn’t, you’re confused why it didn’t. With no rules defined, the story can—and does—go in totally random directions. This may be part of why the story meanders in parts, jumping into magical planes, or traveling to random destinations, or focusing on bizarre, seemingly pointless sex scenes, or toying with death in a way that makes it meaningless, and so on. I suppose it’s supposed to be a mix of magical realism and a good old fashioned American road trip, but this combination just didn’t come together for me as a story.

Rating: 3 stars