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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
What a long, strange trip the reader takes with Shadow, Mr. Wednesday and the entire cast of characters. Sometimes, while reading I wished Gaiman didn't make me work so hard. It's a long and convoluted path to make your way to the moral of the story, or point that the author is making, depending on how you look at it. No spoilers. You'll have to take the trip yourself.
A thoroughly enjoyable read, and another masterpiece from Neil Gaiman. I decided I would wait to read the majority of this book until I was working in America over the summer, and it was well worth the wait. Reading a tale so rich in narrative, tangled with different strands of folklore, legend and snippets of American history, whilst staying in the titular country itself made this novel so much more immersive and fascinating to me as a reader. American Gods is an exquisite book!
This book is about so many things (like the best ones are) that I'm not sure how to review it, so I'll just leave you with a quote.
“People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that rock solid belief, that makes things happen.”
“People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that rock solid belief, that makes things happen.”
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Listened to the Author’s preferred text on Audible and really appreciated the full cast of voices for the characters. It was a slow go for me but glad I finished it. If you like mythology and Americana anything, you’ll enjoy this!
3.5.
It's hard for me to review this book, as I think it did a lot of things really, really well, but in the end it left me kind of cold.
Pros:
I thought that the coming to America short stories scattered throughout were amazing. Sublime. Made me feel a lot more emotion than the main characters of the novel did. And I thought they did well in capturing a lot of different people from different countries and times coming to America, in many different miseries with little bits of hope. Excellently done.
I thought the ending (with Odin/Loki's plan and all) did an excellent job of being a twist, but one that was foreshadowed and made sense and tied everything together.
Cons:
I think my biggest issue was with Shadow and it was that he was just very bland to me. Almost everything he did was following other people's instructions; he was extremely reactive, and I just never got invested in that.
The ending, while fantastic, foreshadowed, and all that, felt a little anti-climatic. Everyone understood the deception and left, and the only one who's life really changed as a result of the book was Shadow (who I didn't particularly care about) and the gods/people who died.
I don't know that it really needed to be as long as it was.
It's hard for me to review this book, as I think it did a lot of things really, really well, but in the end it left me kind of cold.
Pros:
I thought that the coming to America short stories scattered throughout were amazing. Sublime. Made me feel a lot more emotion than the main characters of the novel did. And I thought they did well in capturing a lot of different people from different countries and times coming to America, in many different miseries with little bits of hope. Excellently done.
I thought the ending (with Odin/Loki's plan and all) did an excellent job of being a twist, but one that was foreshadowed and made sense and tied everything together.
Cons:
I think my biggest issue was with Shadow and it was that he was just very bland to me. Almost everything he did was following other people's instructions; he was extremely reactive, and I just never got invested in that.
The ending, while fantastic, foreshadowed, and all that, felt a little anti-climatic. Everyone understood the deception and left, and the only one who's life really changed as a result of the book was Shadow (who I didn't particularly care about) and the gods/people who died.
I don't know that it really needed to be as long as it was.
This book solidified my suspicion that I am just not a Neil Gaiman fan. This is the second book of his that I’ve read, and I just cannot stand his writing style, nor the way he writes characters, who end up being all characteristics and no personality. The characters feel one-dimensional and unreasonable—they make decisions that make so little sense and are also totally separate from whatever “traits” we are told they are supposed to have. The story felt hollow and boring and I ended up just skimming the second half of it. There was so much useless information and unnecessary narrative that did nothing to add to the plot (I realize that it was probably for world-building, but it all felt a bit silly and pointless). Lastly, I found the representation of women in this book to be disappointing; they were either hyper-sexualized or seemed to exist solely to help the male protagonist.
I know that Gaiman has a lot of fans and a lot of people like this book but…I just didn’t.
I know that Gaiman has a lot of fans and a lot of people like this book but…I just didn’t.
I wish Goodreads supported half-star ratings, because I really want to give this book 3.5 stars. I enjoyed the story, the characterization was awesome and the world building was top notch, but the version I listened to (10th anniversary audiobook edition) was significantly too long (almost 20 hours of audio). I think i would have enjoyed this book much more if I'd read the original and not the author's unabridged version. If nothing else, at the end of the day, this book is still an excellent, genre-bending crash-course in deism.
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Bought this a while ago before it was outed the author was a big piece of shit. Because of what we know now, some of this was tough to read. There also isn’t technically any beastiality in this book, but there isn’t not any. Also I had to Google how to spell that so now I’m for sure on a list.
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced