American Gods
Well... hmm... I have to put American Gods down as one of the oddest reading experiences I've had.
First, I'll get this out of the way: it is well-written. There's a certain care and skill on display which makes me think perhaps Neil Gaiman's reputation is fully justified. There are lush descriptions, certainly. What I think stands out most, however, is the little omissions that pop up here and there, or the detours in story, which are almost always given purpose and meaning later.
That said, I'm finding it harder to universally praise the story. It bounces between the very mundane and the mythological. The story itself, I like. But the protagonist is... decidedly dispassionate about everything. He does make some decisions for himself, but mostly he just goes with the flow, and that bothers me in the narrative. His inability to get worked up over... pretty much anything makes it hard for me to feel heavily invested. So while it's neat to take a tour of various American sites and examine the mythology of gods in this land in a more modern setting than I thought it was beforehand (I guess it was written in 2001), I didn't feel the stakes I would have expected over the building conflict between old gods and new. The whole thing has a very phantasmagoric quality, and not just because of the actual dream sequences.
So in the end, I come away from it thinking "this was good, but I'm not sure how I feel about it."
First, I'll get this out of the way: it is well-written. There's a certain care and skill on display which makes me think perhaps Neil Gaiman's reputation is fully justified. There are lush descriptions, certainly. What I think stands out most, however, is the little omissions that pop up here and there, or the detours in story, which are almost always given purpose and meaning later.
That said, I'm finding it harder to universally praise the story. It bounces between the very mundane and the mythological. The story itself, I like. But the protagonist is... decidedly dispassionate about everything. He does make some decisions for himself, but mostly he just goes with the flow, and that bothers me in the narrative. His inability to get worked up over... pretty much anything makes it hard for me to feel heavily invested. So while it's neat to take a tour of various American sites and examine the mythology of gods in this land in a more modern setting than I thought it was beforehand (I guess it was written in 2001), I didn't feel the stakes I would have expected over the building conflict between old gods and new. The whole thing has a very phantasmagoric quality, and not just because of the actual dream sequences.
So in the end, I come away from it thinking "this was good, but I'm not sure how I feel about it."
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