American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
I'm not even sure I can properly describe this book or what it's about. Mostly it seems to be about a war between old gods and new gods in America for their existence because, as is often repeated in the story, America is not a country for gods. Americans tend to disbelieve or trivialize gods (even those they claim to worship) so that the gods end up weak or dead (often, it seems, by suicide. Thor ate a gun, tho it would seem more appropriate for him to bash himself to death with his hammer. but I'm obviously trivializing).
Most of the action centers around a guy named Shadow, who we meet just as he's about to get out of a three year stint in prison for armed robbery. He's looking forward to nothing more than returning to his beloved wife Laura, having a hot bath and a good meal and then keeping his nose clean for the rest of his life. Sadly, he ends up released a couple of days early to attend her funeral -- she and his best friend/boss were killed in a traffic accident. Even worse, he's informed at the funeral that his wife and friend had been having an affair while he was in prison. Laura was lonely and the married best friend/boss was . . . bored, unhappy, feeling entitled, who knows. Anyway, Shadow is now out a wife and a job and at loose ends.
That's when he meets "Mr. Wednesday" (aka Odin, and despite that being made very obvious right away the book is full of little reminders that "hey, this guy is really Odin!"; yeah, got that the first time) who offers him a job as a man-of-all-work, which Shadow insists not include anything illegal but very soon does. One of the more interesting supernatural elements of the story is Laura herself, who rises from her grave to help look out for Shadow (which she's lethally good at, tho how a decaying corpse can manage this for so long, or travel the distances she does, is never fully explained) and all she asks in return is that Shadow find some way to bring her back to life, as being a corpse is even less appealing than one would imagine. Got to say, Laura's fate is a hell of a punishment for screwing around.
From here on out it's a who's who of ancient gods from both the old and new worlds as Odin runs around babbling about "the coming storm" and trying to get all the old gods whipped up for a fight while Shadow runs Odin's errands and has a variety of interesting experiences with a variety of interesting people, both natural and supernatural. The storm/war, by the way, between the old gods and the new ones of media, internet, various modes of transporation and other shiny, new, techy things is basically a background, territorial pissing match having nothing to do with humans. The story ends with the war mostly averted, Shadow finding out some . . . let's just call them odd . . . things about himself and most of the plot threads tied off. I wouldn't be surprised tho to find another Shadow-centric book either out there or coming out.
I did not care for this book at all, and these are the 5 major irritants:
1. Gaiman writes like the love child of Stephen King and Tim Burton. A perfect mix for some but not my cup of tea.
2. I had the feeling that I was supposed to develop a grudging liking for the old gods and I just didn't. Maybe it's because I'm an atheist, but at one point I thought "damn, no wonder we dumped them -- they're such assholes!" Yes, obviously they're assholes because we created them in our physical and/or emotional image (which is one of the book's points) and we're assholes but at least over the tens of thousands of years we're been evolving -- slowly and inconsistently and with a lot of backsliding admittedly -- into better classes of assholes. For some reason, and this detail really bugs me, the gods and legendary heroes created by our minds aren't affected by the changes in our minds. I haven't read anything else of Gaiman's but perhaps he's one of those "people are always scum and always will be" types, even tho he creates an awful lot of exceptions among his human characters to seem a true believer in that rule.
3. His making new gods out of media, the internet, cars, planes, etc, etc. I know it's commonplace to say we've made gods of such things but it's always bugged me. Because something is appreciated or enjoyed for its convenience and usefulness to our lives does not make it a "god", it makes it a tool. Anything more than that is hyperbole. It's like this nonsense of referring to attention paid to anything that fascinates us as "porn" -- food porn, glamor porn, even tragedy porn. Porn is a very specific word referring only to sexual writing and imagery, attaching it to other things seems to me to be disparaging and narrowing the scope of human interests. But I'm getting off my own topic.
4. He telegraphed his plot points way too early and way too obviously -- there was hardly a surprise in the entire book. There was one particular sub-plot where Shadow spends some time in a very nice, normal little Wisconsin town and I could tell immediately there was some children-of-the-corn thing coming up, and there was. It's like reading a whodunit where the killer is easy to guess within 10 pages but you're dragged thru the entire book until the author finally "reveals" the villian at the end (cough*Agatha Christie*cough).
5. At 537 pages, the book was about 200 pages too long. Granted, this is an issue I have with a lot of novels today -- nobody seems able to tell a story succinctly anymore and the quality of stories is suffering for it. In American Gods there are details that are dragged on for way too long ("a storm is coming, a storm is coming" -- yes and in Westeros winter is coming, so what? let's just all get to the freaking point, shall we?) or that are completely meaningless (Odin responds to a question by reciting all twenty-some of the charms he knows -- which had nothing to do with the question, was not used ever again in the story, and was incredibly boring). "Brevity is the soul of wit" should be tattooed backwards onto every writer's forehead, so that he or she can see it whenever they look in a mirror.
(by the way, for those who are wondering, the Judaic/Xtian god is not mentioned at all that I can remember and Jesus gets only one mention -- that he was last seen hitchhiking in Afghanistan and no one gave him a lift. I have a feeling the actual, main American god was a bit too much of a potential hornet's nest to include in a book Gaiman wanted to sell in America)
Most of the action centers around a guy named Shadow, who we meet just as he's about to get out of a three year stint in prison for armed robbery. He's looking forward to nothing more than returning to his beloved wife Laura, having a hot bath and a good meal and then keeping his nose clean for the rest of his life. Sadly, he ends up released a couple of days early to attend her funeral -- she and his best friend/boss were killed in a traffic accident. Even worse, he's informed at the funeral that his wife and friend had been having an affair while he was in prison. Laura was lonely and the married best friend/boss was . . . bored, unhappy, feeling entitled, who knows. Anyway, Shadow is now out a wife and a job and at loose ends.
That's when he meets "Mr. Wednesday" (aka Odin, and despite that being made very obvious right away the book is full of little reminders that "hey, this guy is really Odin!"; yeah, got that the first time) who offers him a job as a man-of-all-work, which Shadow insists not include anything illegal but very soon does. One of the more interesting supernatural elements of the story is Laura herself, who rises from her grave to help look out for Shadow (which she's lethally good at, tho how a decaying corpse can manage this for so long, or travel the distances she does, is never fully explained) and all she asks in return is that Shadow find some way to bring her back to life, as being a corpse is even less appealing than one would imagine. Got to say, Laura's fate is a hell of a punishment for screwing around.
From here on out it's a who's who of ancient gods from both the old and new worlds as Odin runs around babbling about "the coming storm" and trying to get all the old gods whipped up for a fight while Shadow runs Odin's errands and has a variety of interesting experiences with a variety of interesting people, both natural and supernatural. The storm/war, by the way, between the old gods and the new ones of media, internet, various modes of transporation and other shiny, new, techy things is basically a background, territorial pissing match having nothing to do with humans. The story ends with the war mostly averted, Shadow finding out some . . . let's just call them odd . . . things about himself and most of the plot threads tied off. I wouldn't be surprised tho to find another Shadow-centric book either out there or coming out.
I did not care for this book at all, and these are the 5 major irritants:
1. Gaiman writes like the love child of Stephen King and Tim Burton. A perfect mix for some but not my cup of tea.
2. I had the feeling that I was supposed to develop a grudging liking for the old gods and I just didn't. Maybe it's because I'm an atheist, but at one point I thought "damn, no wonder we dumped them -- they're such assholes!" Yes, obviously they're assholes because we created them in our physical and/or emotional image (which is one of the book's points) and we're assholes but at least over the tens of thousands of years we're been evolving -- slowly and inconsistently and with a lot of backsliding admittedly -- into better classes of assholes. For some reason, and this detail really bugs me, the gods and legendary heroes created by our minds aren't affected by the changes in our minds. I haven't read anything else of Gaiman's but perhaps he's one of those "people are always scum and always will be" types, even tho he creates an awful lot of exceptions among his human characters to seem a true believer in that rule.
3. His making new gods out of media, the internet, cars, planes, etc, etc. I know it's commonplace to say we've made gods of such things but it's always bugged me. Because something is appreciated or enjoyed for its convenience and usefulness to our lives does not make it a "god", it makes it a tool. Anything more than that is hyperbole. It's like this nonsense of referring to attention paid to anything that fascinates us as "porn" -- food porn, glamor porn, even tragedy porn. Porn is a very specific word referring only to sexual writing and imagery, attaching it to other things seems to me to be disparaging and narrowing the scope of human interests. But I'm getting off my own topic.
4. He telegraphed his plot points way too early and way too obviously -- there was hardly a surprise in the entire book. There was one particular sub-plot where Shadow spends some time in a very nice, normal little Wisconsin town and I could tell immediately there was some children-of-the-corn thing coming up, and there was. It's like reading a whodunit where the killer is easy to guess within 10 pages but you're dragged thru the entire book until the author finally "reveals" the villian at the end (cough*Agatha Christie*cough).
5. At 537 pages, the book was about 200 pages too long. Granted, this is an issue I have with a lot of novels today -- nobody seems able to tell a story succinctly anymore and the quality of stories is suffering for it. In American Gods there are details that are dragged on for way too long ("a storm is coming, a storm is coming" -- yes and in Westeros winter is coming, so what? let's just all get to the freaking point, shall we?) or that are completely meaningless (Odin responds to a question by reciting all twenty-some of the charms he knows -- which had nothing to do with the question, was not used ever again in the story, and was incredibly boring). "Brevity is the soul of wit" should be tattooed backwards onto every writer's forehead, so that he or she can see it whenever they look in a mirror.
(by the way, for those who are wondering, the Judaic/Xtian god is not mentioned at all that I can remember and Jesus gets only one mention -- that he was last seen hitchhiking in Afghanistan and no one gave him a lift. I have a feeling the actual, main American god was a bit too much of a potential hornet's nest to include in a book Gaiman wanted to sell in America)