To be completely honest I have no idea how I actually felt about Shadow. He is very emotionally detached from everything surrounding him (understandably enough given his recent loss — and yet how does one relate to a character that does not feel?). He does start to feel more alive (in his own words) later on, only by then he has obtained what it seemed to me like some sort of mental superiority that made it hard for me to like him (he was… too perfect perhaps; too set on doing the right thing, with too much ease). I did like about him the fact that he enjoyed reading a good book, though. As for say Wedsneday, he is sort of a mystery, keeping his plans to himself and all that. The reader ends up knowing nothing about him at all — nothing but what the legends say about him and the fact that he is quite the womanizer. Is that enough to make a character likable? Let’s just say I didn’t care that much about him either.

I am usually interested in mythology and as such I was somewhat fascinated by the author’s take on various gods. Such as Czernobog, the Slavic god of the dead and the night, become an old man who reminisces about his days spent working in the “meat business”, knocking down cattle. Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, works as a mortician in a funeral parlor, together with Anubis, the god of the dead. Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba, is a prostitute that literally devours men. Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon personification of dawn now sells Tupperware dishes. And so on and so forth. Even Shadow himself is interpreted by some to be Balder, the Norse god of joy, purity and light.

I have also found very interesting the way the author has chosen to represent the gods: born in people’s minds and brought from their native places to America carried in the stories the immigrants told, the American gods are in a way copies of their original selves. Despite their supernatural powers (that they supposedly have but very rarely show) they ended up living “on the material plane”, and as such they are up to a point people just like anyone else. Which means they can be killed just like anyone else too (as the author puts it, “if you move and act in the material world, then the material world acts on you“). But this is not the only way gods can die, they also cease to live once people (that brought them to life and into America) forget them and cease believing. In the words of the author:

“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”

Perhaps one of the most interesting ideas in the book. Especially if we associate each people’s gods with their particularities, their traditions, what set them apart from other peoples. Particularities and traditions (and, of course, gods) that are about to disappear when living in this huge country called America. Bit by bit traditions are lost in favor of the new, in favor of civilization — and a very good metaphor for that is the battle between gods that takes place in the book.

I started reading this book because I was on the verge of becoming a fan of Mr. Gaiman’s and I wanted to discover more of his work. Unfortunately I was to be disappointed, because for me the book lacked some of the charm other books had. Sure, it was a fantastic setting, with lots of fantastic characters in all sorts of fantastic situations — and yet, I couldn’t help feeling something was missing. Perhaps this was because I didn’t care enough for the main character(s), perhaps because I didn’t get to care enough about what was to happen next. I loved the writing, I loved most of the scenes — and yet I just couldn’t get interested enough in the book on the whole.

What I liked most: the very idea of immigrants coming to America and bringing with them their gods was utterly fascinating for me :)

What I liked least: I couldn’t say exactly. A bit too long winded? Perhaps there were too many characters/small gods for me to keep track of? Don’t get me wrong, they were all fascinating, even the more obscure ones — but there were lots of them and most were making only very brief appearances, and my interest in them sort of started fading after a while.

Recommend it to? Any fantasy fan. While I myself wasn’t very fond of it I think that years from now it may very well become a classic so I do encourage anyone to give it a try, chances are you’ll love it :)

See also
A list of all the gods in the book
The Carousel at the House on the Rock (yes,it really does exist)
A list of Odin’s names (wow, he’s got plenty of them)
A few pages from the author’s notebook related to this book

Written by the same author:
Coraline
Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett)
The Graveyard Book
Neverwhere
Snow, Glass, Apples
Stardust

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