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American Gods
A Novel
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The storm was coming.... Shadow spent three years in prison, keeping his head down, doing his time. All he wanted was to get back to the loving arms of his wife and to stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. But days before his scheduled release, he learns that his wife has been killed in an accident, and his world becomes a colder place. On the plane ride home to the funeral, Shadow meets a grizzled man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A self-styled grifter and rogue, Wednesday offers Shadow a job. And Shadow, a man with nothing to lose, accepts. But working for the enigmatic Wednesday is not without its price, and Shadow soon learns that his role in Wednesday's schemes will be far more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. Entangled in a world of secrets, he embarks on a wild road trip and encounters, among others, the murderous Czernobog, the impish Mr. Nancy, and the beautiful Easter -- all of whom seem to know more about Shadow than he himself does. Shadow will learn that the past does not die, that everyone, including his late wife, had secrets, and that the stakes are higher than anyone could have imagined. All around them a storm of epic proportions threatens to break. Soon Shadow and Wednesday will be swept up into a conflict as old as humanity itself. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought -- and the prize is the very soul of America. As unsettling as it is exhilarating, American Gods is a dark and kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an America at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. Magnificently told, this work of literary magic will haunt the reader far beyond the final page.
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Author Extras
Reading Guides:
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Awards for American Gods |
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Hugo Award for Best SF/Fantasy Novel
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Hugo Award for Best SF/Fantasy Novel
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Critical Praise for
American Gods
“Mystery, satire, sex, horror, poetic prose -- American Gods uses all these to keep the reader turning the pages . . . the story accelerates crisply toward a surprise ending . . . if you have enjoyed, say, John Crowley’s Little, Big or Stephen King’s The Stand or the urbane horror fiction of Jonathan Carroll . . . then American Gods arrives just in time.”
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Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“Gaiman returns to the fertile killing ground that nourished The Sandman: that peculiarly American crossroads where pop culture intersects with religion, violence and death.”
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Village Voice Literary Supplement
“Provocative yet fun . . . Gaiman has applied his vast breadth of knowledge about all things mythological to a truly high concept . . . . American Gods works because of Gaiman’s singular control over the proceedings, his nimble and intelligent voice, and his gift for painting spectacle and splashing big themes across his canvas.”
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Entertainment Weekly
“A fascinating tale . . . by turns thoughtful, hilarious, disturbing, uplifting, horrifying and enjoyable -- and sometimes all at once, in a curious sort of way. Those who are familiar with Gaiman’s earlier work will find a satisfying yarn by a familiar master storyteller. Those who are meeting him for the first time may be surprised at just how good he is.”
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“AMERICAN GODS is a crackerjack suspense yarn with an ending that both surprises and makes perfect sense, as well as many passages of heady, imagistic writing . . . Gaiman has exactly nailed the way we talk . . . AMERICAN GODS is a juicily original melding of archaic myth with the slangy, gritty, melancholy voice of one of America’s great cultural inventions -- the hard-boiled detective; call it Wagnerian noir.”
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Salon.com
“An explanation and exploration of sorts into this strange country of ours . . . the brilliance of AMERICAN GODS comes with Gaiman’s realization that gods might just need a mythology too.”
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Daily Californian
“AMERICAN GODS is nothing short of an odyssey; Shadow’s journey is an epic one . . . Gaiman employs his rich skills in weaving the everyday and the otherworldly to create a fascinating tapestry of characters and stories. The voices of these characters and stories, these humans and gods, tall tales and myths, are as engrossing as they are variegated. . . . Gaiman shows readers that wisdom can be found in all kinds of tales. . . Reading AMERICAN GODS gives the feeling of having really gone somewhere -- and back.”
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Science Fiction Weekly (http://www.scifi.com)
“A magical modern Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . . . . this book will astonish you on every page, and at the same time have you believing every word. You’ll stay up late to finish and then be sorry when it’s done.”
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Tim Powers, author of Declare
“American Gods is some kind of miracle. Gaiman has managed to tell the tallest of tales in the most believable fashion, despite the story’s truly mythic scale. It is an important, essential book.”
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Jonathan Carroll
American Gods is sexy, thrilling, dark, funny and poetic."
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Teller, of Penn & Teller
“Original, engrossing, and endlessly inventive; a picaresque journey across America where the travelers are even stranger than the roadside attractions.”
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George R. R. Martin
“American Gods has poignancy, terror, nobility, magic, sacrifice, wisdom, mystery, heartbreak, and a real emotional richness and grandeur that emerge from masterful storytelling.”
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Peter Straub
"American Gods is like a fast run downhill through a maze -- both exhilarating and twisted."
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Jane Lindskold, author of Changer and
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Stories
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Instructions
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Odd and the Frost Giants
In this inventive, short, yet perfectly formed novel inspired by traditional Norse mythology, Neil Gaiman takes readers on a wild and magical trip to the land of giants and gods and back. In a village in ancient Norway lives a boy named Odd, and he's had some very bad luck: His father perished in...
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