American Gods

I just finished the book American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I have previously read his books Neverwhere and Stardust, so it was interesting to note the different tones of the novels. The first book of his that I read was Stardust which is a fairly short book that is very light. While there was conflict, it wasn’t exactly bloody or anything like that. When I read Neverwhere, I noticed that it was a lot darker than Stardust. Not only was there more blood but it was it was just darker in general. For example, two men (although obviously not human) are following the girl Door and engage in torture/are generally creepy.
But American Gods was even darker than Neverwhere. It follows a man who leaves jail and becomes employed by a man named Wednesday. He gets caught up in this struggle between Gods. Once again, the characters were unlike any I have met before and were exceedingly vivid. Many of the characters he meets are Gods of some sort and their personality fits accordingly. That is something that I really enjoy about Neil Gaiman’s writing: his characters are always very unique so that the reader can picture them in their head.
The only thing that kind of put me off in American Gods was some of the crudeness that was present in the first half of the book. These scenes were usually very explanatory sex scenes which generally added nothing to the story line of the book. It is not as if I found them offensive, but they didn’t really seem to add anything to the story and just added to the dark atmosphere of the book. But, I did enjoy the book despite these random scenes scattered throughout the first half of the book. Like Neverwhere, you were never really sure whether you should trust people other than protagonist and Gaiman really keeps you eager to know how everything will end. The book especially seemed to really pick up during the last half, as conflict increased. Although I liked Neverwhere and Stardust better that isn’t really saying much because those are two of my favorite books. I enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it, especially if you are a fan of fantasy.