In the Lap of the Gods (American Gods - Neil Gaiman)

Member Name: Puggers

Product:	American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Date:	29/05/09 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent first half, some wonderful concepts and characters.

Disadvantages: Downright confusing second half, plot gets a bit lost.

Shadow is having one of those good news/bad news sort of days. He's being released from prison early, which is good. This is, though, only because his wife has just been killed in a car accident, which is bad. Shadow's best friend had offered him a good, steady job for when he got out of prison, which was good. He was also killed in the car crash, which is bad. What's more, the pair were engaged in an act of mutual pleasure at the time, causing the car to veer off the road. Again, quite bad. All in all, then, Shadow emerges from his incarceration a lost, near-broken man, which is perhaps why he accepts the first offer that comes his way without asking too many questions.

To segue away from the plot for a second, it's worth explaining the premise which Neil Gaiman (author of Stardust, Sandman and Coraline) plays with in American Gods. Deities, he feels, have such an essential relationship with those who believe in them that when the believers move, so too do the Gods. As such, the cultural melting-pot that is the United States is inhabited by all manner of divine beings, benevolent and malevolent.

However, a God is only as powerful as the level of belief in them. When migrants move to America, have children and begin to forget about those their families worshipped, so those Gods slowly fade away, ending up as decaying ghosts of their former glory, living in impoverished squalor.
Mr Wednesday is one of these Gods (and, if you know your mythology, you'll know from his name which one) - not as diminished as some, nor as strong as the new "Gods" of America, those of mass media and fast money. He approaches Shadow and offers him employment as his errand-runner; our protagonist's main duty ostensibly being to track down the fallen Gods of America and convince them to join Wednesday's upcoming war on the new Gods.

This, though, is only the central thread of a great, sprawling book which takes in a multitude of stories and legends. The narrative often veers wildly away from this linear path as Shadow treads an increasingly indistinct line between the world we know and the only semi-familiar landscape inhabited by the Gods. It is to Gaiman's great credit (and something that speaks volumes of his abilities as an author) that he is able to, for the most part, control these myriad aspects of his tale and bring them together into a comprehensible, entertaining story.

American Gods is, as one would expect from the premise, bursting at its seams with rich, eccentric characters. However, Shadow is not one of these - and this was a good decision on the author's part. In a narrative heady with idiosyncratic, often tantalisingly ambiguous individuals, the central character presents a calm, restrained voice that seems to offer a context for the Gods to play in. Shadow is, from the outset, unusually accepting and almost passive, yet this works - an anchor that holds the more outlandish, ambitious elements of the novel steady, and keeps it from descending into melodrama.

The ambition and scope of this book is both its strength and its downfall. On the positive side, it's clear that Gaiman has done his research - Gods from all manner of cultures are here, and rendered with the flourish and skill we have come to expect from the author. The Russian Gods, Czernobog and Bialobog are particularly memorable characters - you can almost smell the damp, rotting decay that pervades around them as Gaiman narrates the segments in which Shadow attempts to recruit them for Wednesday's army. He is also able to write the Gods in such a way that they appear quite human, yet at the same time have something elusively other-worldly in their mannerisms. Such skilled creation of atmosphere, character and setting is a constant in American Gods, and you can't help but feeling the author had a lot of fun turning such a rich pool of resources into a novel.

On the debit side, however, it seems as if there was simply too much here for even an author as able as Gaiman to bring together neatly. That this is a long book isn't the problem - it's more that, especially in the second half of the novel, there's too much crammed in, resulting in an endgame that ratchets up the levels of convolution and confusion to a point where it's too great a challenge to take it all in. It's not that there's anything wrong with any of the sub-plots and added vignettes that start to multiply after half-way - they're fine, interesting stories, as well-written as any other part of the novel. However, some of them could almost be novels in their own rights, and the overall effect is a muddying one.

The premise is a big, challenging one in itself, so it's a shame that just when the story should be getting clearer, it becomes more complicated. There's a lot to admire about one particularly surreal multi-chapter scene near the end as a piece of writing, but I just found it dizzyingly perplexing. By the time an impenetrable fog descends over the battleground at the climax, I felt like the same had happened to my brain, such was its inability to make sense of it all.

Ending on a negative note would probably give a false impression of this book. I did enjoy it, and one has to admire the feat that Gaiman accomplishes in covering the ground that he does. However, it's hard to come away from the novel not thinking that you should be feeling more strongly about it. An excellent first half makes for first-rate reading, and is full of vivid characters and delicious, versatile writing, but by the end, one finds the potency has dissipated, fading away like a neglected God.

Summary: A lost, bereaved man finds himself in the midst of warring Gods.