AMERICAN GODS - Neil Gaiman

Gaiman is fast becoming one of my favourite authors to read.
I would love to sit down with him and have a conversation about where his ideas come from for his novels.
When I started out reading American Gods I had no intention of actually writing a review and because it actually took me so much longer than expected to get through it (a couple of months at least) I wasn't sure I was actually grasping the story enough to form much of an opinion.
But I've just having finished it I have so many thoughts. 

The book starts off with us meeting Shadow - who is the central character of the whole book. You get a sense to begin with that he's someone special, even though it's not explicitly stated. He is released from jail early as his wife dies in a car accident. I don't think we ever fully get told why he ended up in jail in the first place but we're given a rough idea and that Shadow is the type of guy that takes the wrap for something that wasn't his fault to save someone else - in short, he's a really honest to God, genuine, good guy. 
Shadow meets a guy, known as Wednesday, on the plane home that 1). knows a little too much about him and his situation and 2). offers him a job. Shadow is hesitant at first but in the end takes the job to essentially be Wednesday bitch. We find out that Wednesday is the God, Odin, Shadow drives him around and runs errands and it all seems strange but harmless to begin with. Wednesday asks a few unsavoury request of Shadow which is does anyway - because he's already been in jail once right?
From here the story progresses into a series of meeting strange beings and encounters that the reader is unsure of whether is real or just happening in Shadows mind. 
We meet super old Gods, gods you would have no doubt heard of and ones you haven't. Gods from myths you would have read about in classics at school. 
And then we meet the super new gods. The gods of the information age, the TV, electricity, the internet, cars. Gods of Technology - the things we worship today. 

We find out that Shadow has entered into a world of Gods and a war is coming. Both sides are both hesitant and willing to fight if it means winning, if it means surviving. Is Shadow the hero they need or will he cost them everything?

I had zero expectations about this book before I started reading it, nor did I actually have any idea what it was about. All I heard was that the book - and the TV show - were good. 
When I was about halfway through the book I still wasn't fully understanding what was going on so I watched the first episode of the TV show in hopes it would shed more light and I think I came out of it even more confused. And I feel like that comes down to the fact that even though things are now visual you tend to lose a lot in the interpretation. Needless to say I stopped that idea - I'll get back into the TV show at another time. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story - even if some of the imagery was lost on me. I simultaneously loved and hated the fact that Gaiman gives you names of Gods but no backgrounds. You don't know where they're from or what they do, and I think that was actually the point. These Gods are being forgotten. They are being lost in a new world to more exciting, shinier toys.
I feel like the novel gives interesting commentary on the time it was written (2001). A time when technology had progressed so quickly, it was everywhere. And even though you still have people who worship their old gods, their old beliefs; their everyday use of technology gives power to it. 
It's interesting commentary on the way the world is heading.
Sure, we learn about old Gods and old religions but we no longer worship them. We no longer sacrifice things to them - and without us - Without our love and belief they cease to exist in our world. It's an interesting idea that the Gods we believe in could be the average Joe down the street who works at the corner store, who is struggling to survive just as much as we are.

I'm interested to see how the TV show pans out and whether it does justice to the ideas and conversations Gaiman poses in the novel.
Definitely something I would gladly read again - 9/10