Reviews tagging 'Death'

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

118 reviews

giannacolo's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Sexual content, Murder, Violence, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Racism, Alcohol, Infidelity, Slavery, Cursing, Death of parent, Car accident, and Gore

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

chillreads2's review against another edition

adventurous dark informative medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Murder, Slavery, and Violence

Minor: Death, Death of parent, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, War, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Blood, Child death, Colonisation, and Miscarriage

corriejn's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

4.5

I thought most of this book was great, but certain sections (no spoilers) dragged out far too long. I did listen to the ~12k words longer, original author's cut edition, so maybe those were some of the sections that were cut down a good bit for the original publishing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Animal death, Sexual content, Violence, Death, Drug abuse, Murder, Child death, Gun violence, Alcohol, Gore, Grief, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, Sexual assault, Torture, Drug use, Sexual violence, and Racism

Moderate: Religious bigotry, Kidnapping, Excrement, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Body horror, Xenophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual harassment, Racial slurs, Car accident, Cannibalism, War, Colonisation, and Animal cruelty

bunnybunnysenpai's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

American Gods is a novel about Shadow, a newly released convict whose wife died a day before his release. Having nowhere to go, he follows Mr. Wednesday, who sucks him into a world where the old gods of every religion live in America in corporeal form. The majority of the book is Wednesday and Shadow trying to gather a force of old gods to battle with the new gods (ie media, television, radio). Shadow goes on a long journey, meeting many gods and humans along the way, travelling all throughout America in the process.

This book took me nearly 9 months to finish, but I am so glad I did. The beginning of this book draws you in with a very interesting premise. The middle gets a bit bland and I struggled to get through it for quite a while, but the ending was truly worth it. I loved listening to the audiobook as well, because it was a full cast performance, making the slower parts of the book a lot more bearable. The diversity in characters as well as the fun twists that happen throughout kept me interested enough through the blander parts of the book to keep me reading, and I am very glad I didn't decide to drop it.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Child death, Death, Suicide, Sexual content, and Gun violence

marthadude's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Gaslighting, Grief, Alcohol, Body horror, Car accident, Child death, Fatphobia, Gore, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Slavery, Vomit, War, Blood, Death, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic friendship, and Violence

Moderate: Animal death, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Colonisation, Slavery, and Racism

Minor: Incest, Pedophilia, and Adult/minor relationship

madradstarchild's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, War, Alcohol, Animal death, Death, and Violence

Minor: Blood, Cancer, Car accident, Classism, Colonisation, Confinement, Death of parent, Drug use, Excrement, Gaslighting, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Murder, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Vomit

ksheaffs's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, and Sexual content

Moderate: Racial slurs, Child death, and Colonisation

Minor: Car accident

cierralizer's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Sexual content, Alcohol, Animal death, Child death, Colonisation, Suicidal thoughts, and War

Minor: Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Cannibalism, and Car accident

anniefwrites's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I think that Neil Gaiman is the master of mood--he can create ambience and tension like no other writer I know of. And I really loved the twists and turns that occur in the last few chapters of the book. It felt like finally solving a puzzle, which is such a satisfying feeling, but I wish there were more moments like that throughout because I often felt a bit adrift and confused with all of the different settings and characters and the sort of removed perspective of Shadow guiding the way. I think it's also a product of its time--I really didn't vibe with the valorization of police or the sort of flat female characters, who were often mere bodies of sexual desire for male characters. The masculinity of the book could sometimes be grating for me as a female reader, like how so many men just... pee in random places for no discernable reason. It felt like it was a book designed with a male reader in mind, and I was just looking in at times. I also wonder what this book would have been like if written by an Indigenous author; though Gaiman does go into the Native aspects of the mythology of America, I think it could have gone further.  But I do think that it's a really unique story, that the individual locales within each section of the book were really vivid, and that the ending was strong and exciting.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Murder, War, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Gore, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Slavery, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Sexual assault, Blood, Car accident, Colonisation, and Misogyny

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Kidnapping

talithabellaa's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Violence, War, Physical abuse, Murder, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Gore, Emotional abuse, Death, and Alcohol