Review: American Gods

American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition by Neil Gaiman

I read this book in 2 ways. Kindle ebook version and the audible version (A Full Cast Production). This might be the first time I’ve listen to a book recorded as a full cast. Compared to other books where there is a female voice and a male voice, the full cast here is done really well. I immediately identified with the voices picked for Shadow and Mr. Wednesday. It brought the book alive.

Love the plot and the method Neil has interwoven the old gods into the story. It’s a fun thing to guess and lookup each god as you come across them.

Less loved - Shadow’s motives and actions. They didn’t come across as very realistic to me. I am glad that he is in the story and he is moving the story along, but I can’t understand why he does what he does along the way. Taking it a step further, Shadow’s role in the story seems to be more a narrator’s. In fact, you could argue that the story would have progressed just fine to the climax without him (the outcome will certainly be different). Wednesday’s explanation near the end about Shadow’s existence is not that believable to me and doesn’t tie back to how important Shadow supposed to be.

Finally, I am a bit surprised that there are not face time for the more dominant religion figures and gods. Seems like a big missed opportunity. (I read the “apocryphal” section and think there is great potential there!)

Incidentally, I learned near the end of my read that Starz is making a TV series based on this book and its world. Looking forward to that!