Book Review and Writing Lessons: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life.

But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself.

Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined—it is a job that takes him on a dark and strange road trip and introduces him to a host of eccentric characters whose fates are mysteriously intertwined with his own. Along the way Shadow will learn that the past never dies; that everyone, including his beloved Laura, harbors secrets; and that dreams, totems, legends, and myths are more real than we know. Ultimately, he will discover that beneath the placid surface of everyday life a storm is brewing—an epic war for the very soul of America—and that he is standing squarely in its path.

Genre: Adult Fantasy
Publisher: William Morrow; Anniversary edition (June 21, 2011)
Page Count: 674 pages

I’ve heard about this book for years and I really like the Neil Gaiman works I’ve read, so I decided to give one of his adult books a spin. … It doesn’t live up to the hype.

The Plot

The plot is really really stretched out. I feel like many scenes were just tossed in the book to stretch out the page count. There were a lot of scenes that took place at some point in history that really didn’t have much to do with the rest of the book besides the fact that there were also gods in them. I found myself skipping a lot through these rambles because I was getting bored.

Most of the twists happen to the end so it’s almost like you can read the beginning, skip most of the middle, and read the end and you’re good. I find that this is a thing in adult books. Is it too much to ask that adult books have good pacing?

I also feel like Gaiman rattled on about a lot of one-sided political points like American slavery, Christopher Columbus, the Christian celebration of Christmas, and the colonization of the Americas. I feel like he didn’t get all sides of the issues and only regurgitated bullet-points. Let’s everybody hate on ancestors because no other country has done crappy things to other people. I don’t even know why he felt the need to include all this.

My favorite scene had to be the carousel scene when the gods reveal their true forms. It was fantastical and trippy. I also liked that the dialogue flowed pretty naturally and the accents were written really well so I could hear them in my head easily, especially for Czernobog and Mr. Nancy.

The Characters

Shadow is the main character. I like his calm personality and his fascination with coin tricks, but I found myself having a tough time rooting for him. One second he’s waiting for a girl to get into her house before leaving to make sure she’s safe and the next second he’s debating watching porn in his hotel room and has sex with random attractive goddesses. Maybe some people call this a complex character, but I found it off-putting.

Sam Black Crow I think was my favorite character? I don’t really have a favorite, but she made me laugh in her exchange with some bad guys.

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to like Mr. Wednesday. Shadow does but in the end I really didn’t get his devotion to him. Why would you be devoted to a conman who has sex with teenage girls? I did find it funny how he got mad at Shadow for being unimpressed with all of his godly magic and this exchange.

Shadow: How’d you lose your eye?
Wednesday: Oh I know where it is.

I like that Gaiman included a lot of unusual gods like Kali aka Mama-Ji from Hindu mythology and Mr. Nancy aka Anansi from Caribbean folklore. His take on making Mad Sweeney aka a Leprechaun tall with no Irish accent was really interesting. I also found it highly amusing that Mr. Ibis aka Thoth and Jacquel aka Anubis run a funeral parlor lol.

What I don’t like is a lot of evil deities seem to be on the “good” side. Czernobog is promoted as the God of Evil and he even loves that people bashed each other’s heads in his name. There are also loa mentioned in the final battle which are basically voodoo demons. I also did not like Laura. She was a mean skank who didn’t become somewhat likable until the last few pages of the book.

The most creative characters were definitely the gods of modern things like Technical Boy and Mr. World. There were even gods of planes, drugs, and cars.

The Setting

Two of my favorite places in the world Rock City and Iceland were featured. I do have to say Gaiman’s descriptions of Rock City were amazingly accurate and that it was an awesome place for a final battle to take place. I knew all of the exact areas he was talking about since I’ve been to Rock City multiple times.

The Epic Things

I like that borscht was eaten, but Shadow said it was gross. Obviously, these people didn’t make borscht right because borscht is delicious. I also like that Thunderbirds were included since they’re really cool and they’re not in novels a lot. I’ve also noticed that Neil Gaiman has a thing for cats because every book of his I’ve read includes at least one cat in it lol. Which I totally don’t mind.

The Theme

I can’t help but think of a sermon from when I was a kid when someone broke down scriptures about idolatry. Idols are anything you put above God. We create gods in our lives whether that be our phones, money, a cause, our job, our bodies, or even our own loved ones. Anything put before God is an idol and as humans, it’s in our nature to worship something. If it’s not God then it’s going to be something else.

The Content

This definitely an adult book. Strong Rated-R. There’s a lot of cursing. Every curse word too. I don’t think there was a curse word in the book that wasn’t used. There are also several explicit sex scenes that go on for pages both heterosexual and homosexual. There is also a lot of sexual innuendo and vivid description of breasts, male genitalia, and sexual acts. There’s even a whole story told about tiger balls for some weird reason. There’s also strong drug use and a lot of smoking. There’s also graphically described human and animal sacrifice, an autopsy of a teenage girl, someone getting run over by a car, and gross voodoo rituals. Several characters have suicidal thoughts.

The Writing Lessons

Just Because This is An Adult Book Do We Have to Write About Gross Sex Stuff – As I mentioned before there’s a lot of sex, fan service, and sexual innuendo, and whatever. It honestly felt unnecessary and maybe a lot of readers get some kind of pornographic pleasure from reading about the stuff, but I do not.

How this applies to writing: Yes, there can be adult books that don’t have to have gross sex scenes. I’ve read them and I want to write them. Yes, sex happens and it’s a great thing, but it just feels immoral to describe it in such graphic and gross detail for the world to read. It’s pornography and it’s a damaging thing to watch and read about. Both put mentally damaging pictures in your head. There are studies about how much pornography damages your mental health and it’s wrong to promote this in literature.

The Conclusion

The concept is interesting and there were some profound moments, but you have to wade through so much freaking content to get to the good parts it’s just not worth the read. I won’t be reading any more adult Neil Gaiman novels.

Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Neverwhere (1995), Stardust (1999), the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning American Gods (2001), Anansi Boys (2005), and Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett, 1990), as well as the short story collections Smoke and Mirrors (1998) and Fragile Things (2006).

His first collection of short fiction, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions, was nominated for the UK’s MacMillan Silver Pen Awards as the best short story collection of the year. Most recently, Gaiman was both a contributor to and co-editor with Al Sarrantonio of Stories (2010), and his own story in the volume, The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains, has been nominated for a number of awards.

American Gods has been released in an expanded tenth-anniversary edition, and there is an HBO series in the works.

Have you read this book? Have you read any Neil Gaiman? What are your opinions of content in books?