Book Review - American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Synopsis:  Shadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident.

Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible.

He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever he the same...

First Line:  "Shadow had done three years in prison."

Random Quote:  "The signs for the House on the Rock were all around that part of the world:  oblique, ambiguous signs all across Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin, probably as far away as Iowa, Shadow suspected, signs alerting you to the existence of the House on the Rock.  Shadow had seen the signs, and wondered about them."

Review:  I am a huge Neil Gaiman fan grrl.  I admit it.  I've read everything that I can get my hands on and I love most of it.  I always feel like Neil (I'm a fan grrl - I get to call him Neil) and I share a reading history.  I love the little synchronicities I frequently encounter when reading him - a mention of another book that I love, a reference to a story I just heard.  Neil's a great storyteller and if he's sometimes a little twee (see also, Stardust) I forgive him that because he's just that great.

Carousel horse from House on the Rock - Image by John Kroll via Flickr

It was suspenseful after the completely marvelous and brilliant and compelling Sandman to see what Neil might do next - would he be able to do something else?  Would there be a new comic?  Or a novel?  Turns out there was Neverwhere which was just excellent and then there was American Gods.

This is my third time reading this book - as with Sandman I find I occasionally have to revisit it.  The idea of it is so wonderful - that we brought our gods with us from all the places that we came from when we came to America and they may or may not be all that happy with having arrived here.  This notion runs parallel with the notion that gods of various kinds (pixies, fairies, Odin, the Wild Hunt, the Morrigan, you get my drift) gain or lose power based on our belief in them.  This is an idea that another favorite writer of mine, Charles de Lint, plays with a lot, but Neil really gets into the thick of it in this book.

The world is full of a rich and varied and simultaneous mythologies of all kinds - and it is inventing new ones every day.  Don't believe me?  Talk to a member of the Steve Jobs cult about their worship of Apple products.  It's great fun to follow along with Neil as he takes this idea out to play and I love the sheer enormity of it and the scholarship of it - the notion that he did what I did growing up (and as an adult) - read oodles and oodles of fairy tales and remembered them and connected them all together in his head.

In all the ways this is a book about a guy getting out of prison and taking a hero's journey it is even more a book about us and the stories we tell and the one's we stop telling.  It's a book that understands that story is what we're here for in the end.  It's what we are.  The rest is just decoration.

Reading Challenges:  Once Upon a Time IV Reading Challenge, Speculative Fiction Reading Challenge 2010, 2010 100+ Reading Challenge