American Gods
Buy ebook #ad: ISBN: 9780755322817
Description
Shadow has patiently done his time in prison. But as the moment of his release approaches, he begins to sense that some unnamed disaster is lying in wait for him. As he makes his way home, he encounters the mysterious Mr Wednesday, who appears to be both a refugee from a distant country at war and the King of America. And perhaps even a god.
Reviewed on 6th July 2008
It's taken me a long time to read this novel through, and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or bad. It's not that it wasn't engrossing, as it was, just that it is perhaps a slightly different style to the trashy star trek novels or easy to read discworld books or the cheap thrillers I dip into now and then.
It's a novel that I wouldn't ask Ashley to read... I have several of these, and they tend to be ones with upsetting beginings. Tad Williams' "The War of the Flowers" is another example of this. Shadow begins as a jailed prisoner just about to be released, and things go downhill from there.
The plot's still not quite clear to me even now having finished - I think it might be another one of those books that has to be read a second time to actually understand what's going on. I'm not going to say it wasn't a good book, because it wasn't, but I'm not convinced it's the type of thing I'd buy again... but then I've already bought another of Gaiman's books from the £2 shop... so we'll see.
