Neil GaimanFantasy · Graphic Novels·b. 1960
American Gods
Synopsis
Shadow Moon has served his time and is counting the days until he can go home to his wife, Laura, and rebuild his life. Then, just before his release, he learns that Laura is dead, killed in a car accident, and the future he'd been holding onto vanishes. On the flight home he meets a grifter who calls himself Mr. Wednesday — a man who already seems to know everything about Shadow, and who offers him a job as bodyguard and errand-runner.
Wednesday, it turns out, is far more than he appears, and the work takes Shadow on a strange journey across back-road America, recruiting a fading pantheon of old gods: deities carried to the New World in the hearts and rituals of immigrants, now dwindling as belief moves on.
Arrayed against them are the new gods of television, the internet, celebrity, and the market, and a war is coming that could remake the spiritual landscape of the country. As Shadow is drawn deeper into the conflict, secrets about Wednesday, about the coming battle, and about Shadow himself begin to surface.
Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker Awards, Neil Gaiman's modern classic is a genre-blurring blend of fantasy, mythology, road novel, and Americana — strange, violent, funny, and haunting.
Collected in
How it reads
- Writing5.0
- Impact5.0
- Characters5.0
- Plot5.0
- Atmosphere5.0
Prose complexity 7/10
- Neil Gaiman’s « American Gods » is the kind of books that are hard to summarize or write a review about. This book is so many stories in one whole epic, there are several subplots and characters and details, it’s a very intricate construction that cannot be easily condensed into one clear idea. So here are some scraps about it: It’s about Gods, but not your regular mainstream Gods, it’s about faith and the evolution and devolution of religions. Gods that were created by Man and are abandoned by him, they were left thirsty for believers and worshippers and found themselves in the back alley of the pantheon of the big Gods. It’s also about New Gods, that rise as fast as they fall. It’s about a war to prove who is more relevant than the other. It’s about Shadow, a man who just walked out of jail, learned about the death of his wife, and finds himself caught in a game with rules he doesn’t master well, yet he goes with the flow of the craziness he encounters. It’s also about coin tricks, Shadow’s hobby, in fact this whole book is a coin trick. You know it’s a trick, the coin doesn’t disappear for real, you know there is some kind of subversion, you try to watch closely to discover how it’s done, but you end up being baffled and surprised with the result. I kept reading, followed all the clues, got all the details, thought I knew how this is done, what it’s about, but in the end, I found out that I was looking in the wrong way, Neil Gaiman was weaving a much bigger intrigue than the one I imagined. This is a highly entertaining book, it didn’t bore me for one second, every word in this book is there for a reason, there are no superfluous details or subplots. Keep your mind wide awake when reading it, also get ready to play a game of “Guess who is this god?” and have your mythologies knowledge tested.
- [Sorry to my english-speaking friends, but, although it's a book I've read in english, I feel more comfortable to talk about it in greek; anyway there are a lot of great reviews of it written in english in Goodreads, so there is nothing to miss here]<br><br>Σύμφωνα με την καταλογογράφηση της Βιβλιοθήκης του Κογκρέσου, το βιβλίο εμπίπτει στις παρακάτω θεματικές κατηγορίες: Αμερικανικά Εθνικά Χαρακτηριστικά, Πνευματικός Πόλεμος, Αποφυλακισμένοι, Σωματοφύλακες, Χήροι. Με 1,5 στα 5 σωστά (ως βασικά θέματα του βιβλίου, αφού και τα υπόλοιπα υπάρχουν, αλλά σε καμία περίπτωση δεν παίζουν κεντρικό ρόλο), δύσκολα θα βρει κανείς πιο άκυρη παρουσίαση ενός τόσο πλούσιου και πολυεπίπεδου βιβλίου. <br><br>Στην πραγματικότητα τα βασικά θέματα του βιβλίου περιγράφονται στον τίτλο του: Αμερική και Θεοί. Πώς διαμορφώθηκαν οι ΗΠΑ, τι ρόλο έπαιξε σε αυτή τη διαμόρφωση η θρησκευτική πίστη των διαφόρων εθνοτήτων που βρέθηκαν στον Νέο Κόσμο, τι είναι τελικά η ίδια η θρησκευτική πίστη και οι διάφορες θεότητες, ποια η σχέση της με την εσωτερική αναζήτηση του καθενός. Και όλα αυτά δοσμένα μέσα από μια συναρπαστική αφήγηση και ένα υποδόριο, καθόλου εύκολο, χιούμορ, σε ένα βιβλίο που είναι ταυτόχρονα νουάρ, road-trip, θρίλερ, κοινωνικό, πολιτικό, θρησκευτικό και χίλια-δυο άλλα.<br><br>Με μια λέξη, θεϊκό.
- This book is hands down amazing. I had never read something like this before and I am so glad I took the time to read it. While some parts got confusing at times, and might have been a bit hard to follow, the storyline was really fascinating and it kept me wanting to read more. I really liked the idea of the challenge modernity poses to the beliefs regarding prior religious systems. What I was not prepared for was the gosh darn plot twists, they made the book even more exciting. Also the way Gaiman used information both from the traditional myths and creatively to create the story kept me engaged and fascinated to read more. Overall, This book was one of the best reads - it was something new, a genre I had never really tried before and I am glad that I stepped out of my comfort zone for it.