bibliodragon

I've not read much by Gaiman, it was Terry Pratchett that attracted me to Good Omens and I only made it half way through Anansi Boys down to a particularly bad patch of concentration issues then misplacing the book. But as an author who manages to not be a raging dick on the internet I've always felt he's been an author that I should be reading. American Gods has been in my to-read pile for a while now, and as there was no internet to distract me I finally managed to crack it open.

It's quite a big book, the 672 page author's preferred text, and having been struggling through the much shorter Anansi Boys I thought it would take me a while to read it, but I managed it it two days. It's not as if it's a particularly fast paced book; it tends to meander and is a definite slow build, but the characters are compelling and interesting, and I found it's protagonist, newly released from prison and newly bereaved Shadow sympathetic and his slow transformation from numb widower to being truly alive compelling. Then there are the gods; brought to America by the immigrants and transformed from their original mythological roots by time in the country and the modern gods of technology, media, even the now diminished railways, and the conflict between the two groups. But there are twists in the tale, not abrupt shocks but slower and hinted at and so actually make sense.

I love the way Gaiman has the fantastical mix with the every day, an example witch impressed me was the ways the Gods managed to get by ; Anubis and Thoth run a funeral parlor, Czernobog was a slaughter-man, Odin is a grifter. And he manages a cameo from a certian carpenter in an interesting and fun yet still respectful manner. And when Shadow stops the big battle between gods that the book has been building to before it's really begun (and so saves the day), he manages it in a way that is not anti-climatic.

A sprawling epic told with character and good humour. It's made me want to go search out Anansi Boys and give it another read.