Gaiman’s storytelling prowess is front and centre in American Gods, it races along, building myths and mini marvels, as the main character Shadow encounters the crumbling remains of once-mighty deities, their lustre diminished, destroyed even by the new Gods of the modern world: commerce, media, superficiality. His work is always on the edge, without being pretentious, and he plays with multiple concepts so deftly its impossible not to be entranced by the intricacy of it all.
Published in 2001, I think I read it sometime that year or so, but I knew Gaiman more as a comic writer, Blue Orchid and Sandman mainly, where he achieved the rare balance of delivering a cracking good read, with something to say about the world we live in, in a format which, when I was young, was much derided. A modern moral story it’s a beast of a ride, and one of my absolute favourite books. Somehow it manages to straddle the chaos of the everyday, with the power and mystery of the ancients, stirring the gods of America’s various constituent populations, with the all-powerful, glittering, idols of today.
Gaiman’s American Gods is a modern wonder of the world.
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