Mon 5 Feb 2007
This is a great book, and well-deserving of the awards and recognition that Gaiman has received since its publication in 2001.
At the center of the novel is Shadow, an ex-con who learns his wife has died in a car accident just prior to his release from prison. As he returns home to his former life, he meets Mr. Wednesday, and elderly grifter who offers him an ill-defined job as a bodyguard. As the story unfolds, we enter a world of abandoned gods, both familiar and esoteric, and Shadow finds himself in the middle of an impending conflict of forgotten dieties played out across the landscape of middle America.
Gaiman’s writing is tight but lyrical, hiw plotting is good, and the novel plays out across several levels. This is hiw best to date, and with this book has established himself as an important writer of fantastic fiction.
If you’re going to read one Gaiman book, this is it. I think I recognized about 2/3 of the gods in the book — how many did you get?