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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods'

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Big Furry Bear

11:19 / 07.03.02

Thinking of reading this. Has anyone else? Is it worth it?

Eloi Tsabaoth

11:23 / 07.03.02

Yes I have.
Yes it is.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

11:29 / 07.03.02

American Gods gave me one of the most depressing experiences of my life. Finding this, first novel by one of the greatest writers of comics today (tm) on the shelves with a belly band carrying the blazon:

As good as Stephen King or your money back/

The fuck? Is that really the limit of ambition?

"As good as a punch in the throat or your money back".

Niiiiice.

Sax

11:31 / 07.03.02

I almost bought it an hour ago, but didn't. I was in Waterstones in their three-for-two section and it was there, but when I picked it up realised some wag had placed it on the table and it wasn't part of the deal. So I got another one by Gaiman (Mirrors and something or other? I can't be arsed to move my hand 17 inches to look in the bag)

Thought that Stephen King blurb a little distasteful, too. I wonder how you'd actually go about getting your money back if you didn't like it?

Kit-Cat Club

11:32 / 07.03.02

First novel what? There are lots, aren't there? Not to mention Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett [insert hat/twat comment here]...

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

11:43 / 07.03.02

Good Omens is a collaborations, and Mirrors, whatever is a collection of shit stories...sorry, short stories. I dont; knwo of any actual proper, twat-in-hatless novels he has done....

Kit-Cat Club

11:44 / 07.03.02

Neverwhere and Stardust - ? Or have I crossed my wires again?

Bear - there's an old thread on Gaiman
here - thought it might be some help (but I haven't checked it for spoilers, so go carefully).

[ 07-03-2002: Message edited by: Kit-Cat Club ]

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

11:49 / 07.03.02

Shit

(Twists and turns in attempt to justify incorrect original statement)

Neverwhere was a novelisation of a truly mighty BBC2 kitschfest rather than an actual novel in itself. Stardust was a "collaborative project" with Charles Vess and, being, like the Dream Hunters", halfway between a fairy story and a comic book, does not really count as a novel either.

Phew.

Eloi Tsabaoth

12:07 / 07.03.02

Neverwhere was written at the same time as the TV series, and was released simultaneously. More of a cross-meeja project than a novelisation.

Big Furry Bear

12:35 / 07.03.02

Thanks for the link Cat - I'll check it out, peeping through my fingers.

wanderingstar

12:39 / 07.03.02

and Gaiman himself said (somewhere in his online journal thing) that he considers AG to be his first novel.

Kit-Cat Club

12:41 / 07.03.02

Oh well - must admit I'm not too distressed at being mistaken about Neil Gaiman.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:46 / 07.03.02

Being mistaken for, however...

Eloi Tsabaoth

12:47 / 07.03.02

I'm not a huge Gaiman fan either. But I liked American Gods. I think he's still too much Show over Tell, i.e. the true identities of the characters are disclosed in a pretty blunt manner, but it has good ideas and a few juicy twists.
Thinking about Hausfrau's comment about Gaiman having fans rather than readers (in the previous Gaiman thread) I think this is due to him having started in comics. You don't get conventions full of Readerboys, do you?

Kit-Cat Club

12:54 / 07.03.02

Well - yes, I think you *do* - at least there are several SF/F conventions a year. It's just one of those genres which appeal to people who tend to be slightly obsessive - you can say much the same about school stories, which have a pretty niche audience as well (except in that case it is largely composed of middle-aged women)... and since comics seems to attract people who are faintly obsessive about them and the subject matter is similar, that's probably why Gaiman has fans rather than readers.

I am quite interested in reading American Gods, but only because it is meant to be based on Eight Days of Luke (DWJ).

Eloi Tsabaoth

12:59 / 07.03.02

Sorry, what I meant was Comics Readers are more likely to be fans of a certain character/writer/artist than just pick up books and objectively read them. I do recognise there are hoards of book fans too, witness the Harry Potter deathcult.

[ 07-03-2002: Message edited by: The New Flesh ]

Trijhaos

17:44 / 07.03.02

I'm not a fan of Neil Gaiman at all. I picked up the first Sandman trade awhile back. Is this the stuff they consider innovative? Bah. I read Stardust. Ooooh, a fairy tale. Blech. Stardust didn't thrill me. Picked up Neverwhere; it's still sitting on my shelf unread.

Good Omens? Got halfway through, got bored, not funny, not innovative, not very engaging. Took to used bookstore, traded it for sci-fi/fantasy crap. enjoyed sci-fi/fantasy crap.

American Gods, on the other hand, I enjoyed immensely. Don't know why really. It could be because it features my favorite mythological beings, Odin and Loki. The book is an interesting read. I wouldn't pay full price for it though.

The Monkey

18:42 / 07.03.02

I actually thought Sandman was hit and miss...the parts I liked the least were the big shiny pseudo-philosophy bits occasionally spouted by Morpheus. Not exactly, erm, scintillating. But there was a lot of neat stuff, and the often-clever in/out of history and biography, and other stories. Mmm, G.K. Chesterton. I think my absolute favorite bit is the Dr. Destiny - the fellow who escapes from Arkham - plotline, especially when it ends with that classic image copped from "Journey to the West" of the defiant imitator unwittingly encapsulated in the palm of the creator.
Neverwhere had potential - the "underground society" idea was quite nice, if a bit trumpery filled - but was too hasty. Discovering that it was a novelization really explains a great deal.
Stardust and Good Omens left me flat. Unoriginal. Dull. At times suffering from deforming eruptions of moralizing.

But apparently I should go pick up AG?
Good. I was beginning to doubt Neil had it in him.

01:44 / 09.03.02

i'm about a third of the way through it, and i'm enjoying it a lot. i haven't read any of Gaiman's other prose writing, but i may have to track some of it down after this. his writing style is a lot more straightforward than i'd expected, but this isn't really a bad thing.

straylight

01:11 / 14.03.02

American Gods was the first Gaiman I really read - I'd TRIED to read Sandman, but thought it was for morbid high school goths - and I adored it. Give me mythology, give me weird bits of American culture, and give me just enough mysterious plot moments to keep me not quite sure I know what exactly is going on...and give me the girl's speech on page 308 (in the American edition anyway) about the things she believes. Beautiful. I might even have to give Sandman a try again - but then, I've since picked up Good Omens and Neverwhere and liked them both, so I guess I'm pretty sold on the Gaiman thing (him having a blog doesn't hurt, either).

Sax

05:30 / 14.03.02

Well, just finished Smoke and Mirrors, the book of short stories. I so wanted to enjoy this, but if failed to work on so many levels, and fell between far too many stools. It felt like reading pastiches of, at turns, Jeff Noon, Ray Bradbury and Ramsey Campbell, with none of it quite working. And the poetry? Yuck. He really should have left them in his Sixth Form English schoolbooks.

johnnymonolith

08:39 / 14.03.02

Hi everyone. Been lurking around for a year so- this is my first post! Be gentle please

RE: AG. I actually quite liked it, esp. the short stories in it. Plot was a bit predicatble but Gaiman did manage to write a decent, on his own, stand alone novel. Good stuff.

grant

13:26 / 14.03.02

Trijhaos -- you should give Sandman another chance. The first trade collects the stories when Gaiman was still writing for what DC was marketing as a "horror" imprint, but once he got out of that, it changes quite a bit.

And Odin, Thor and Loki show up a few times later on. (Thor, unlike the Marvel hero, is boisterous, moody, not terribly sharp, and drinks to excess. It rains when he's hung over.)

Trijhaos

14:39 / 14.03.02

Give Sandman another chance? I may do that. I really liked the last bit of the first trade. I believe it was called "the sound of her wings" with Dream just accompanying Death on her rounds. Where about in the series does Gaiman begin to shine?

I, Libertine

14:50 / 14.03.02

I thought AG was passable, entertaining, and worth reading...

...but at times it felt to me like a comic book script.

Baz Auckland

17:31 / 14.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Trijhaos:
I'm not a fan of Neil Gaiman at all. I picked up the first Sandman trade awhile back. Is this the stuff they consider innovative? Bah. I read Stardust. Ooooh, a fairy tale. Blech. Stardust didn't thrill me. Picked up Neverwhere; it's still sitting on my shelf unread.

Leave Neverwhere unread.

I think it may be because I read it and became obsessed when I was 16, that I think Sandman was innovative for its time, and would be hard to enjoy as much nowadays...

...I also started reading it at issue #54, which are much better stories, with better art than the first 20.

grant

12:58 / 15.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Trijhaos:
Give Sandman another chance? I may do that. I really liked the last bit of the first trade. I believe it was called "the sound of her wings" with Dream just accompanying Death on her rounds. Where about in the series does Gaiman begin to shine?

Actually, right there is where the series starts to change - once Death is introduced as a sort of cheerful young girl, things get increasingly, well, non-horror.

Unicornius

01:16 / 09.11.03

I just finished reading this book and have one little question: who is the God who Shadow forgets after meeting him? . I tried on Neil Gaiman's FAQ but he declined to comment.

Can anybody help?

Colonel Kadmon

22:01 / 19.11.03

Having been a reader (rather than fanboy) for ever, and only recently having got into comics, I must say that I was disappointed with American Gods. I found the pace lumpen, the central character wooden, the point of it indescernable. It had some nice points (the triple goddess was good, and the scene with the merry-go-round sticks in my mind) but I don't feel that he managed to either develop his original idea, nor to weave a satisfactory narrative around it.

Keith

07:42 / 27.11.03

AG was okayish, but it rambled a bit IMHO. GYAC I didn't get ask for my money back. The story bears an uncanny similarity to Peter David's "Gods Above" Star Trek novel. Maybe Gaiman owns a time machine...

the rake at the gates

14:43 / 01.12.03

i'm a big fan of sandman, and i'm neither 15 nor a goth, it gets quite a bashing here on barbelith, but after the first few issues it really works, and i find the story much more emotionally engaging than most comics, if you accept its a epic myth.

gaimans books on the other hand tend to not quite reach the heights of sandman, smoke and mirrors is very hit and miss, stardust is good as a fairytale, but american gods is the best, even if it is a bit rambling and some of the twists are a bit obvious. a lot of people say its obvious who the gods are, and i could see them coming a mile off, but i lent to a friend and then had to explain who a lot of the characters were, so maybye thats just me.

never read neverwhere, it was originally the series, but gaiman didn't like the outcome which he described as like doctor who, so he wrote the book as the directors cut.

Nescio

11:36 / 02.12.03

Having read Sandman and it still makes me smile when I think about the jelly babies. I read AG and really enjoyed it, not for the story line which was a bit bland, but for the playing of the gods, I like it when someone makes them fallible. ;-)

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:22 / 29.12.03

Well, I found this in a fleamarket over Christmas, and thought I'd give it a go. Has the problems I tend to associate with Gaiman - he's a good comics writer, but has real problems with prose. The book is overlong and spends too much time explaining what the central character is thinking. Lots of tell, little show. The dialogue is at times embarrassingly clunky: the set-piece list of things Sam believes in is a good example of the way the characters talk - as if they had written down their dialogue beforehand. The plot is intermittently interesting, but the ideas feel stale, and many of the characters don't actually do much except show off Gaiman's command of the anthropology textbook. Has its moments, definitely, but too much waffle and too much DO YOU SEE.

cusm

16:28 / 30.12.03

Yea, I really liked the gods. Shadow I could take or leave, he was something of an empty shell, which I can only presume was somewhat intentional in living up to his name. But again, the gods were dead cool. Its a great story about Odin, with some neat bits of scenary along the way.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:09 / 30.12.03

Having given this a little more thought, it strikes me that one of the reasons that the operating conceit felt stale was that it had not only been done before, but had been done before by Gaiman himself. I was thinking at first that it tasted familiar because of Douglas Adams (The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, wasn't it?), but brief consideration reveals that it is also lifted from "Brief Lives". This possibly also helps to explain why the book felt like a Sandman story. Thing being that one of Gaiman's real talents is working with artists to create involving and interesting narratives, and without that American Gods felt too much like dry toast too often...

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