My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was something else. I read about Neil Gaiman’s thoughts on how he wrote “American Gods.” He said that he was looking to write a story that was a little bit of a murder mystery, a road trip story, an adventure, and a mythological story. Boy did he ever. “American Gods” is always ready to surprise you. As I read I eventually started to anticipate when another curve ball was going to be thrown my way. I couldn’t always figure out the twist and turns before I got to them, but I definitly started to expect them. I thought this was fascinating. The way “American Gods” keeps you on the edge of you seat is extrodinary.
The characters are fascinating. Each one has their own already established mythos in the real world that Gaiman masterfully blends into his story. The ways they behave seem to make them feel like they actually originate from their respective home lands. Characters develop, but in subtle ways. I actually quite prefer the subtly. Characters don’t just shed their flaws as the story goes on, but actually evolve organically due to their experiences. The way America and the small towns “American Gods” visits in the book play into the overall story makes them feel like characters themselves.
Like I said earlier, American Gods feels like multiple stories wrapped into one. As Shadow and Wednesday move from location to location, their story changes and shifts as well. Story lines end and new ones begin multiple times throughout the book. This is never done in a way were the reader would be lost or confused. In fact, this gives the book a really high-energy pacing and tends to minimize any slow or tedious spots in the plot. The way that Gaiman weaves the stories together is really masterful. They always seem to end in a satisfactory manner before a new one starts to wind up.
Gaiman also does an amazing job giving his locations life. I’ve never personally traveled to the road side attractions and small towns that he describes, but they certainly felt believable to me. Each location also felt very different than the last. Gaiman has a way of placing the reader in the events of “American Gods” and in the locations all throughout America. Even the “Coming to America” asides littered throughout the book help give an over all feeling and mood to the plot and inform the reader about the deeper meanings and actions to the plot, and they help better characterize America as a location.
“American Gods” was simply a delight to read. If I was to explain the plot to a friend, I’m sure they would have a very difficult time understanding. Fortunately, Gaiman writes his story in a way that the reader can easily keep up. The complexities of the story are very easily understood and digested. I often find that books as ambitious as “American Gods” often end up making the reader spend more time trying to understand what is happening and less time actually enjoying the story. No such problem exists in “American Gods.” I will be a bit critical and say that at a few points the story was a bit nebulous and the explanations to events were not always obvious. This left me sometimes wondering why something was happening the way it was, but these instances were very few and far between. They certainly did not detract much from the overall story.
I think the best thing I can say about “American Gods” is that Gaiman has some how taken an entire nation that actually exists and that many are very familiar with and transformed it into a magical and mysterious place. It’s world building with the potential to be on the scale of the wizarding world shown in Harry Potter, but it still feels somehow very believable and very real. “American Gods” was a wonderful read that even though it has its confusing parts, still manages to entertain, mystify, and excite the reader.
0 Comments