American Gods

Read from Tuesday, December 6th to Wednesday, December 28th, 2011.

I started American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, as an audiobook, downloaded for free from Audible.com (I'm sure you've seen the ads.).  I wanted to try out an audiobook for the first time in my life, but I wasn't too thrilled.  I'm sure it would be great if I commuted to work, or drove a lot, but I do neither, so when I wanted to continue the story, I most often just picked up the book (borrowed and recommended by my co-worker Sue).  I read a lot faster than the spoken version.  

American Gods is a different genre than I normally read.  A little simplistic and cliched at times, Gaiman often writes for children and I could tell.  So the story took awhile to grow on me, but it did mostly thanks to the fascinating plot.  It begins with Shadow being released from prison.  His wife, Laura, was killed in a car crash while giving road head to another guy, and so Shadow got out early.  While traumatized, Shadow is a quiet guy and the narrator.  On the trip home, he is coerced into working as a kind of assistant for Wednesday, a strange but charismatic older man who knows everything about Shadow already. 

The conflict lies in the premise that all Gods imagined by humanity actually walk the earth, most assuming everyday, boring lives.  They came over with Americans from the Old country, where they flourished, but in America the Gods are slowly dying out as people slowly forget.  They are not Gods like Jesus and Allah, but more like the Norse Pantheon, the Hindu Gods, African animal gods and Pagan symbols, like Easter in human form.  Wednesday is Odin, the Norse King God, and he thrives on human sacrifice to him, which has been lacking in recent years.  The old Gods are threatened by the new Gods of America, those of Media, the Internet, Television and Commercialism.    Wednesday and Shadow travel across the country, (with beautiful scenery and imagery), trying to recruit the reluctant old Gods to join together with him to fight off the threat from the new Gods.  They meet characters like dwarves, elves, leprechauns, the Russian God Czernobog, Anansi from Africa, the Zorya from Russia, and Egyptian gods of the dead.  Also, Laura is reanimated as a zombie that helps out Shadow from time to time.

They are pursued by the new Gods and a government group comparable to the FBI or CIA.  Laura kills two agents that were detaining Shadow, and Wednesday hides him in a small town in Wisconsin.  This is a strange little detour in the book, as Shadow assumes a fake identity and befriends some of the quaint, nice townsfolk.  They have a tradition each winter of sinking an old car on the lake, but also a weird coincidence of kids going missing each winter. 

Soon, Wednesday is murdered by the new Gods, and all the old Gods are galvanized into action.  They retrieve his body, and Shadow agrees to hold vigil, which consists of hanging from the World Tree in rural Virginia for nine days.  While on the tree, Shadow dies, and enters the Underworld, where he is judged by Anubis, and learns that Wednesday was his mysterious, unknown father.  Shadow is brought back from the dead by Easter in time to make it to the final, climactic battle held at Rock City.  Shadow has realized that the whole thing is just an elaborate con set up by Odin and Loki.  The battle between the gods would be dedicated to Odin, and he feeds on the sacrifice, and Loki feeds on chaos.  Both gods would become incredibly powerful.  Shadow arrives just in time to convince all the gods, on each side, to just accept that America is not a good place for them, but they should make do with what they have.  Thus, the battle is averted, and Odin's ghost fades.  Laura kills Loki as well, before finally being able to rest.

Afterwards, Shadow returns to the Wisconsin lake town and discovers there a kobold in the form of Hinzelman, an old man who protects the town from economic ruin in exchange for the sacrifice of one child each winter.  Shadow and a cop defeat him, and his house burns down.  Since Shadow is Wednesday's son, he is part-God himself.  He spends the rest of his life wandering the world. 

It was a very interesting book.  Took me awhile to get into the story, but I flew through the second half of this large book.  Although Gaiman is technically a foreigner, he captures the soul of small-town America very well (almost no action happens in cities).  I purchased my own copy after returning it to Sue.  I am also interested in the HBO adaptation coming soon.  Four out of five stars.