*****Spoiling the plot, spoiling the plot******
I found it a great premise with a poor execution, but maybe I was expecting a bit much. The original idea: "What if the Gods were in decline - they were more or less ordinary chaps who get hungry and have to find jobs and behave like you and me..." Great start.
Then not much was done with it. So the Eygptian God of the Dead - he's - oh, he's running a funeral parlour.
Can I also stick in a complaint about the character of Bilquis? Quite annoyed about her, as Gaiman has infrequently done some interesting things with female characters. I was simultaneously cheered and uneasy when she first crops up, a Goddess now reduced to sex work during which her clients "worship" her and are consumed by her omnivorous devouring ladyparts. I mean, hurrah for devouring ladyparts, but I had a sneaking feeling it wasn't going to end well. And indeed, it didn't.
For all the mythical embroidery, I felt that "sexually powerful call girl gets killed by dodgy punter in limo" was a bit tired. Possibly Gaiman was making a point about the precarious nature of street sex work and the reduction of Goddesses to perilous mortal professions. But it read in a slightly flat, "Let's hit the call girl with a limo" kind of way. She dies to make a point (about the callousness of the new gods) - not very different from sexy minor female characters dying in any fiction.
I quite liked the dead wife, though.
To add my name to the roll-call - I liked the Sandman. I think half the problem with the novel was that he sketched his characters and scenery very broadly and blankly; I feel they could really have worked well with images to give them a sense of being deeper/more rounded.
Overall, I think the world of the novel just felt flat. If I'd had more of a sense of the world, and the characters, then the moments of vision and hallucination, and the bits of dialogue that were doomy or portentous, might have become surprising interventions into a grimy, or tawdry, or tacky world. As it was, the difference between the ordinary and the marvellous wasn't startling or compelling. |
