I confess that I only read this because I recently watched the TV series and I enjoyed both. The TV series seemed awfully violent and bloody - especially the first episode. There's a lot that was changed in the TV series from the book - and I truly marvel at the skill and imagination of the authors of the screen play -- what they created is absolutely in line with this universe.
The book was very enjoyable -- I found Gaiman's writing style to be very easy to read. He's got a good sense of humor and I enjoy the small jokes that he weaves in. Many of the characters were very likeable - and I really admire the way he created such a dense web of interrelationships, stories and sub-plots.
It wasn't until I was nearly halfway through the book - that I asked, "Who IS Shadow Moon, anyway?" Gaiman's interpretations of mythology and character development is a lot of fun to read. I just wish I had the paperback version (not the e-book) so I could share this with someone.
If you've been reading reviews of the TV series written by fans of the book - you'll already know that the carousel scene is not in the TV series, and there are several other things that have been added which are very enjoyable (such as expanding Mad Sweeny and Laura Moon's characters, changing the location of the first meeting with Easter and her response, OMG the ice cream truck!).
I did read the expanded author's special edition which may have added scenes and content not in the well loved original version of the book. The carousel scene was a really fun pile of events -- reminded me of the descriptions of hallucinations in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in some ways. When Shadow Moon looks at Mr Nancy - he sees all the visual incarnations at once -- which is a stretch for a human brain, right?
The idea that "gods" are created by a number of people growing to believe in a thing is the basic premise of this book -- people brought their "gods" with them from other lands, like cutting a branch of code off a tree -- that god came as a version of him/herself at the time, leaving behind versions in the homeland who may be having a different experience. The "old gods" are basically subroutines. The new gods are net-new -- maybe that makes them more powerful in some ways, but also less personally invested in the same kinds of things that drive the other gods.
One of my favorite concepts in the book was "Backstage" -- the idea that there is this place that looks like the world we see, but it's not quite the same. Even the passage of time is different - a few minutes backstage is like hours in the world we see, and so on. This alternate reality is a convenient mechanism for playing out important actions and conversations.
REVIEW: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
RATING: 5-stars
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
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