American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition: A Novel

There are so many reviews of the old book I won't spend much time doing that here. It is a modern day masterpiece. One that will be remembered for a long time.

What I would like to address is which edition you should purchase. If you already own American Gods then there is almost nothing new to be found here. There is just a small amount of new content. You should at least read his introduction to this edition. So if you have never purchased this book before then this is the best looking and most complete version available.

Bottom line is don't double dip but if this is your first copy you owe it to yourself to get this edition.

I have only ever read two books by Neil Gaiman(please don't lynch me) and they have both been religiously themed, i.e., Good Omens and American Gods. I can't for the life of me think why it's taken so long to getting around to this one.

In my defence, while this 10th Anniversary Edition is a review copy, I do actually own another battered copy of its first iteration, unread, along with its spin-off sibling Anansi Boys- both languish on the TBR shelf.

The story, for the uninitiated...
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After three years in prison, Shadow has done his time. But as the time until his release ticks away, he can feel a storm brewing. Two days before he gets out, his wife Laura dies in a mysterious car crash, in adulterous circumstances. Dazed, Shadow travels home, only to encounter the bizarre Mr Wednesday claiming to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a very strange journey across the States, along the way solving the murders which have occurred every winter in one small American town. But the storm is about to break... Disturbing, gripping and profoundly strange, Gaiman's epic new novel sees him on the road to the heart of America. [Headline Books]

So how can one give a review of a book that is beloved of so many, which has been read and reviewed over the last decade and still be fresh.

I'll try.

Gaiman weaves a number of threads together in this work. It's a story about gods, travel murder, change, gah! the more I pick at it the more things it seems to be. So to begin I'll break it down.

Neil Gaiman meets Route 66
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American Gods felt very much like a road trip, despite the fact that a significant portion of the travel in the book was by plane. Perhaps it's mention of certain American landmarks and iconic places . Maybe the stereotypes that the gods inhabit, hark back to an older America. I feel the weight of nostalgia, for things lost in a vast open landscape.

That Gaiman can generate this feeling in me I think speaks for the strength of his prose, as in retrospect, there's not actually that much travel.

Everyone comes to America, even the gods.
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Aiding this perception is the fact that it's an immigrant tale as well. A tale of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses and the gods they carried with them. Many of the gods bear the accents and the mannerisms of the culture they spring from and in Shadow traveling to meet them, the reader is given a sense of the cultural diversity that is the melting pot of America, the gods journey there and their slow strung out demise.

Yggdrasil versus the Matrix
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Entwined with these themes is that of change, old gods versus new - the gods of internet, credit cards and fibre optics. Is this is a comment on what America has become, a land of the almighty dollar, the land of the instant gratification? I am not sure.

The Missing God

One thing that did strike me as odd was the omission of Jesus. If any god would be in America you'd think it would be Jesus, but he's conspicuous in his absence, apparently he's in Afghanistan. Did Gaiman do this deliberately? He mentions Jesus in the twitter interview printed in the back of this version, but it doesn't answer the question of Jesus' absence or apparent aloofness. Was he playing it safe?

Murder Mystery & Confidence Tricks
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There's a murder mystery entwined in the story as well, but the less said about that the better as it's a nice little twist.

There's coin tricks and confidence tricks through out the novel, magic and misdirection. Gaiman uses it both as plot device and on a meta level(this should hit you at the end, or before, if you are sharper than me). There's something about old time confidence tricks that harks back to a bygone America, face to face cons that required an understanding of human psychology.

Summing up
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This is the authors preferred text, it's a little longer and obviously varies from the first itteration. It includes a twitter interview, as well as a novella featuring Shadow called Monarch of the Glen. I doubt that I would go back and read the first edition, it's not a tale that I think, given my present reading load, that would be of any benefit and this is after all Gaiman's preferred story.

For Gaiman fans that haven't read this version, it would be worth it if you haven't read the tale in awhile. American Gods is not one of those pacey pot boilers you read in an afternoon. It's a book to be savoured and enjoyed, it's a book that requires attention.

For some one who is new to Gaiman I'd recommend this version. It's not as I have said, a pacey read, but an unfolding journey of discovery with a couple of twists that I and perhaps you won't see coming.

This was a review copy provided by Headline.

This is such a strange book. So much positive praise for it came from friends and strangers on the internet alike, so I decided to give it a go about a year ago and really wanted to like it as much as everyone else does. I just now suddenly remembered I read it, and it seems like some weird fever dream. That is honestly the best description that I can think of: some weird fever dream of a novel that seems like my mind wrote it in REM sleep so it kind of makes no sense but is still oddly vivid and memorable. The overall concept seems like it could be done really well and made to be incredibly interesting, but American Gods does not do this (which is something that I have heard from many who did not particularly enjoy this book). The gods themselves are underwhelming, random, and sometimes unbelievable, and the main character is written as a husk of a human being, just going along with whatever happens like he has no capacity to process human emotions or observe the reality he lives in being challenged. I think that was the biggest problem for me; Shadow Moon is so unbelievable and out of touch as a human character that I could not relate to him at all and actually found him extremely insipid and empty, which led to me sort of just dawdling along with the book just to be able to say I've read it. He just accepts things as they come. My dead wife is suddenly alive for some reason? Ok, sure. These people are incarnations of GODS? Yes, that makes sense and my reality is not suddenly torn apart, let me try to settle a dispute between all of them like we're in counseling. Oh, I'm gonna be sacrificed? Welp, can't argue with that, string me up bois.

I'm no author by any means, but I've gone through the stages of inspiring to be one and have written short stories and parts of novels in the past. This book seems like those instances when you just sort of write whatever comes to mind and try to string it all together so it makes a book. Just as a small example, the Hinzelmann storyline was actually kind of interesting but so incredibly random that I could've sworn it was another book entirely. There was just so much arbitrary stuff going on that wasn't written well enough to make a coherent and interesting tale.

This is a great book and a really nice hardback edition hence the five stars. Would love to own the signed limited edition but it's waaaaaay too expensive. However when I received my copy from Amazon, the page edges have been cut very unevenly and looks quite sloppy. Anyone else received a copy like this or is mine a faulty one?

Seeing the top reviews for this are baffling and I think many expect either one of two things: a stereotypical fantasy plot with common plot devices, cliches, and obvious foresight ala a Brandon Sanderson novel (sorry but if you think his books are good fantasy we just won't agree), or a Neil Gaiman book akin to his more family/kid friendly ones like The Graveyard Book or Coraline (great books but comparing apples to oranges).

American Gods is extremely unique, adult in tone, and really cares about the history and mythology. I've seen people complain about the stories in between the narrative saying they're irrelevant to the story, but are they not paying any attention? These stories provide the historical context and more subtext for specific gods in the story as well as provide more world building, they're essential to the book. And some are utterly fascinating, like discovering a long lost historical text. No parts of the book show Gaiman's research and writing chops like these!

I've also seen complaints about the protagonist which is probably most baffling. Again, many like stock cliché lead characters and get cognitive dissonance when reading this one's. Shadow is a great 'fish out of water' character for the audience and much of his physicality and temperament fit the story perfectly (if you're paying attention, I can't explain without spoilers). I'd love to say more about what makes him such a great lead but doing so would spoil some major aspects of the story.

American Gods is one of the best novels in the last 30 years I'd argue and it's popularity has brought it into mainstream fantasy fanbases who just don't have the pallette for quality writing I think. When I see reviews comparing it to Sanderson fantasy or YA novels, it's like seeing someone review a Kubrick film but upset it's not more like a Marvel movie.

P. S. Don't watch the TV show. It's one of the worst adaptations I've ever seen.

I found this book boring. I cannot say it was written badly, not at all, but there were moments when i wished it would become more interesting but it would not. the pacing was slow, it was too long for me. I guess Neil Gaiman is not my type of writer.

The premise of this novel sounded intriguing enough to purchase this book - something I rarely can afford. But - the ideas - and there are many - don't add up to a whole novel. Perhaps a few novels, if given more substance and time. I wanted very much to be immersed in an epic adventure, but it often felt uneven - short stories cobbled together in the midst of a promising tale. Some of it was very absorbing. Yet, I couldn't quite suspend disbelief for long enough.

I started this a while ago, and went back and forth on it. Then one weekend we lost power due to storms and so, I spent the majority of the weekend reading, and finished this book. Gaiman's novel was a little dense, slow moving for a while, driven by curiosity more than clearly defined plot (which isn't a bad thing).

I have to say I was a little disappointed by this novel, mainly because it didn't live up to my expectations. The only other Gaiman work I'd read was his collaboration with Terry Pratchett in Good Omens, which I absolutely loved. American Gods was a more serious and dense, and so took me a lot longer than Good Omens, which I couldn't put down.

That said, I'm always intrigued by updating/adapting/incorporating myth into other areas of life, so the content interested me. Honestly, if I didn't have that interest going in, I might not have finished. The density makes me feel that a second reading would be rewarding, but I'm not sure when I'd be up to the challenge again.

In the end, I enjoyed it, but not as much as I had expected to, and so, was a little disappointed by it.

Interesting concept, nice style of writing but it starts slow, very, very slowly. Sure it picked up speed a while through but overall I still didn't love it. I simply didn't care about what happend to Shadow, Laura or Odin - none the characters weren't truly developed, nor did I feel that many of the plots were. I had expected a truly brilliant ending for all those 'empty' pages but it never came.

I think I need to stop reading highly recommended books. My expectations are too high...

I am nowhere near as familiar with Gaiman's work as I should be, and this is my first shot at his adult fiction. I have to admit that, fifty pages in, I was fairly convinced that I wouldn't like it, especially after talking to someone who only made it a bit further than that before giving up. As it turns out, it just took a while for me to get what Gaiman was trying to do with this book.

The book centers on Shadow, a hulking, pensive man who is fond of coin tricks and has just served a short prison stint for assault. Through what appears to be the cruel vagaries of fate, Shadow finds himself with nowhere to go and nobody waiting for him when he is released, except for an odd man named Wednesday, who just might be a down-on-his-luck god. The rest of the story is basically one long road trip across America's heartland, punctuated by a jumbled pastiche of cameos by the ragged remnants of once-almighty deities, as Shadow works under Wednesday to rally an army against the supposedly imminent attack of the glittering, frantic, materialistic new gods of America.

This book starts out with a little preamble and lot of moroseness, and the otherworldly elements are kicked off by an oddly placed erotic chapter that gets extremely weird very quickly. It takes a bit of fortitude to process the first few chapters, and to accept that the plot largely consists of rising action once you get past them. Indeed, the climax is so literally anti-climactic that it will definitely be the last straw for any reader who is still on the fence at that point. Fortunately for me, I was wholly enjoying myself by the time I got to the end. American Gods is just like the Americana road trip that Shadow takes: an aimless journey across a landscape dotted with bizarre curiosities. Journeys like that have no real "point," except to make one ponder the loneliness of decades-old tourist traps, and wonder at the power they still have to make a traveler stop and stare.

I read the tenth anniversary edition, which included scenes that Gaiman edited out of the original publication. I enjoyed all of the various visits and confrontations that Shadow endures throughout the story, but I have a feeling these bonus scenes contributed to the occasionally sluggish pace of the book. This edition also included Gaiman's ruminations on being a Brit that has the gall to write a book about American folklore, which are both amusing and illuminating.

It's hard to categorize this book, which can be observed by reading the list of awards it has won: the Hugo, Locus, Nebula, and Bram Stoker, among others. It's a little bit fantasy, a little bit horror, a little bit literary fiction, and more than a little bit strange. Ultimately, though, I found myself unwilling to put it down, and I found myself in a thoughtful mood for a few days after I finished, both of which are good signs. I'd recommend it to anybody who has a craving for something that's simultaneously familiar and ethereal.