American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It's all a metaphor, from the beginning to the end.

The old gods are the ones brought to the North American continent by travellers, migrants and immigrants, long before the continent was even called America. They feed on worship and thrive on sacrifices of their followers, but they don't do well in America, because people don't worship them, are forgetting them, and the old gods grow older and die forgotten. The main character, Shadow, is actually human, hired by one of the old gods, who calls himself Wednesday, to help recruit the old gods against the "modern gods" that people worship nowadays: Internet, cars, credit cards, computers, TV, phones and everything symbolizing modern times. The conflict seems inevitable...With all the gods marching through the pages of the book, it's natural to think that it's all about religion. It isn't. And you don't need to be an immigrant to grasp the ever-present conflict between old and new, past and future. I just never came across such a neatly woven allegory.There is a huge amount of mythology, legends, fairy tales and bonfire stories told masterfully through a cast of unlikely heroes. If the idea of aging gods scheming and scamming through life to scrape for a meager existence isn't attractive by itself to make you read it, there is fantastic dialogue to amuse the reader as well as many clever and funny twists. For someone who likes long tales like myself, this book is a gold mine. At the end, all the stories seemingly not connected throughout the novel, finally come together.There could have been a touch more romance, earthly or divine, I don't really care, but even without it, I thoroughly enjoyed the American Gods.Subnote: I read this book as a part of "1 Book 1 Twitter" book club (though I'm not certain if it can be called a book club, but it made me and about 50,000 others read it at the same time). Looking forward to the next one. You can join it on twitter by following @1b1t

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