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by: Neil Gaiman
List Price: $14.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060558123
ISBN: 0060558121
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 624
Publication Date: September 01, 2003
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: September 02, 2003
Sales Rank: 3282
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, who knows more about Shadow than is possible, warns that a storm is coming -- a battle for the very soul of America . . . and they are in its direct path.
One of the most talked-about books of the new millennium, American Gods is a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an American landscape at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. It is, quite simply, a contemporary masterpiece.
Amazon.com Review:
American Gods is Neil Gaiman's best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep examination of the American spirit. Gaiman tackles everything from the onslaught of the information age to the meaning of death, but he doesn't sacrifice the razor-sharp plotting and narrative style he's been delivering since his Sandman days.
Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book.
Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details that make this such a cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games and prostitution. 'This is a bad land for Gods,' says Shadow.
More than a tourist in America, but not a native, Neil Gaiman offers an outside-in and inside-out perspective on the soul and spirituality of the country--our obsessions with money and power, our jumbled religious heritage and its societal outcomes, and the millennial decisions we face about what's real and what's not. --Therese Littleton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Good book
This is a good book. Enjoyed the plot and storyline. Very imaginative and thought provoking.
Rating:  - A deep understanding
Neil Gaiman understands something about the collective unconscious and the way Gods form within it. He also knows something about the way these Gods interact. I think the reason his books resonate with so many (I mean heck there are more than 700 reviews on this site alone), is that he speaks truth within fiction.
I love the TechnoGod, the brash kid and the conflict between the old and the new. This is real folks, more real than you can imagine.
Rating: - Thought provoking...makes you question your beliefs
Wow! This book took me a long time to read. Although, we did move into a new house and my book was in some box for at least a week, maybe longer...
I have been wracking my brain for the words to describe this book and to adequately describe its beauty and profundity (especially for those of you who have read the book); unfortunately I am just going to have to write my thoughts either way...
This book was my introduction to Neil Gaiman. I have to say that the writing style ... Read More
Rating:  - Painful
I read this because a colleague loaned me her copy and asked me to. I have never read a more uninteresting book. I didn't like any of the characters, nor did I care what happened to them. Before you buy this one, please skim the beginning chapters at the library or online. The book is apparently free online (I can see why) and know that it doesn't get any better from there- one long, boring road trip...a random string of events LOOSELY tied together with a "plot." Ug. What a waste of my valuable reading ... Read More
Rating: - How Neil Gaiman Re-invents the Fantasy Novel
The old gods walk through the pages of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." They also drink, curse, fight, scowl, gamble, and struggle to make a living as prostitutes, grifters, morticians, and taxi drivers. Life is hard for immortals when the masses who once worshipped them have forgotten them - or worse have embraced newer, shinier gods (like TV and technology).
Gaiman's novel is like a Salvatore Dali painting - a wickedly warped distortion of America that crystallizes the essence of this strange, ... Read More
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