American Gods

American Gods: A Novel happens to be my second Neil Gaiman novel and neither of those has been the novel I was planning to read of his. I've been meaning to pick up Coraline since purchasing and enjoying the movie. It was a cute but freaky kids story that shouldn't be shown to kids under a certain age unless they are incredibly morbid. The movie takes me back to a Grimm's Fairy Tales type of dark story. Anyways, the first reviewed book with Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch which was humorous and just a delightful story. American Gods falls into a different category.


In American Gods, a storm is brewing throughout America and somehow a seemingly normal ex-con has a pivotal role. You're greeted with plenty of mythology from the beginning that is carried on until the end. I found it amusing that you had a chance to see all types of different old god/s mythologies including Norse, American Indian, and other odd fairy tales to go along. What Gaiman didn't touch base on was Christianity, for the most part, and Santa. I'm not sure how he would have fared, but I'm assuming that he left those out so as not to alienate a good portion of his readers. The story is quite engaging and well written. He reminds me of a cross between Chuck Palahnuik and Stephen King. The way he writes dialogue was amusing.

I wasn't happy with the amount of smut that he decided to write about in the first hundred of so pages. There were three sex scenes and one was a homosexual scene. It didn't really bring the story along in any way. I felt that it took away from what could have been a story for multiple age groups. I was also happy that we weren't inundated throughout his book with the same type of imagery. I believe that I would have put the book down had that happened. It still affects my rating and recommendation in a not-so-good way.

Rating: 5 CBs - I can't recommend this b/c of the sex stuff at the beginning. If I wanted to read a romance novel then I'd go pick up one. I have a feeling that he was somewhat tamed by having a co-author with the first book I read of his. I will attempt to read a couple other books by Gaiman in the near future hopefully with better results. reader beware.

-D