American Gods
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4.6 • 20 Ratings
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- €5.49
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- €5.49
Publisher Description
AN ACCLAIMED, EMMY-NOMINATED TV SERIES ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO
WINNER OF THE HUGO, LOCUS AND BRAM STOKER AWARDS
'To give him his full title: Neil Gaiman, Architect of Worlds, Svengali of Plot, Shaman of Character, Exploder of Cliché, Master Craftsman of Style, Dreamer Laureate of the Republic of Letters' DAVID MITCHELL
'Original, engrossing, and endlessly inventive' GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
'Brilliant and unique' GUARDIAN
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'This is about the soul of America, the idea that everyone came here from somewhere' NEIL GAIMAN
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After three years in prison, Shadow Moon is free to go home. But hours before his release, his beloved wife is killed in a freak accident. Numbly, he boards a plane where he meets an enigmatic stranger who seems to know Shadow and claims to be an ancient god - and king of America.
Together they embark on a profoundly strange road trip across the USA, encountering a kaleidoscopic cast of characters along the way. But all around them a storm of unnatural proportions is gathering.
War is coming, an epic struggle for the very soul of America. And Shadow is standing squarely in its path.
NEIL GAIMAN.
WITH STORIES COME POSSIBILITIES.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Do Americans worship anything besides money, beauty, phones and cars? Ask Shadow, a man enlisted to serve a strange deity who’s taken human form and is looking for allies in a coming war between Old and New. American Gods, Neil Gaiman’s richly imagined pageturner, invites you to suspend disbelief and open yourself to the possibility that the divine world harbours something ancient, alive—and worth believing in. Gaiman’s fluid prose effortlessly propels Shadow through a thrilling, hall-of-mirrors plot.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Titans clash, but with more fuss than fury in this fantasy demi-epic from the author of Neverwhere. The intriguing premise of Gaiman's tale is that the gods of European yore, who came to North America with their immigrant believers, are squaring off for a rumble with new indigenous deities: "gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon." They all walk around in mufti, disguised as ordinary people, which causes no end of trouble for 32-year-old protagonist Shadow Moon, who can't turn around without bumping into a minor divinity. Released from prison the day after his beloved wife dies in a car accident, Shadow takes a job as emissary for Mr. Wednesday, avatar of the Norse god Grimnir, unaware that his boss's recruiting trip across the American heartland will subject him to repeat visits from the reanimated corpse of his dead wife and brutal roughing up by the goons of Wednesday's adversary, Mr. World. At last Shadow must reevaluate his own deeply held beliefs in order to determine his crucial role in the final showdown. Gaiman tries to keep the magical and the mundane evenly balanced, but he is clearly more interested in the activities of his human protagonists: Shadow's poignant personal moments and the tale's affectionate slices of smalltown life are much better developed than the aimless plot, which bounces Shadow from one episodic encounter to another in a design only the gods seem to know. Mere mortal readers will enjoy the tale's wit, but puzzle over its strained mythopoeia. (One-day laydown, June 19)
