Review: American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ok, let's start this with the a quick fact, Neil Gaiman is a god of Fantasy. His imagination and his skill at this is almost unmatched. How he comes up with the concepts he comes up with and how he is able to blend things of different nature naturally into one another like nothing more than weaving two different colored threads together, is something only he can do. A simultaneous low fantasy and high fantasy book. What do I mean, the array and spectrum of characters involved and by the extension of an event towards the end of the book, the entire gamut of characters that ever existed in the world of mythologies are part of this book. And we see interaction with a fantastical elements regularly. But, the story itself is a low fantasy one. Dealing with things we deal almost regularly. One wouldn't call things like a conning, murder or war as exclusive to fantasy.

Also at some places it gave a whole another meaning to multiple personalities. This is an awesome story, a thriller if you will, a slow thriller nevertheless.

With all the high praise for the book I've been doling out you might ask me why only three stars. Well I've my reasons. A couple of them. One is the narration felt very choppy, unlike his other books. Just when I felt there is more I'd find that that part is done and we're at some other thing and in places I was waiting for that part to end.

Secondly, I needed this is the kind of book that needed more footnotes and glossary to make full sense of it. I'm a sucker for mythological fantasy, and I've more than a decent knowledge of many cultures. Yet I was searching on net different concepts from different myths than reading, which made the already choppy narration even more dry due to the context switches. I wish more care was taken in telling about some characters so that we would get the context more clearly. I wish there were footnotes for those words that don't occur in dictionaries.

But having said all that who the fudge am I to comment on the awesome Neil Gaiman. A good book to enjoy over a long weekend or long international flights.

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