My first introduction to Gaiman was his award-winning Sandman graphic novel series, and I fell in love both with his characters and the author. This book did not disappoint, even in comparison to the series (although, since I'm a picture-book sort of girl, I would recommend his Sandman series first at any time).

With Gaiman`s signature style of prose, I felt like I was being a read a story from the Sandman himself. The fantastical story line knits together an eclectic mix of gods from different eras and cultures, and with his dark imaginings even conjures up a new gang of gods in town. It speaks of honour, tradition, inevitable changes, and sacrifices must always be made for anything you do.

This is an epic saga squished between two humble covers. While the trend these days is to produce a light series, this book is dense and savoury, and I enjoyed every morsel.

Wow, did I ever love this book! I started it, not knowing what to expect, only to find that I couldn't put it down.

Gods may be forgotten, but they don't just cease to exist. What happens when gods are forgotten is that rituals are lost, symbols become unreadable, and those forgotten gods are forced to live lives of mediocrity among humans, doing what they have to do to keep some memory of themselves alive.

Then there is the coming of the storm. Where new gods are determined to kill off the old gods. And then we have Shadow, who suddenly finds himself having to believe in concepts and gods and goddesses he's only ever dreamed of.

Really, there is so much going on in this book that only the surface of the words can be mentioned in this review. Gaiman has written an amazing book, one that I'll be remembering for a long time to come and that I'll be recommending whenever I have the opportunity.

The first Neil Gaiman book I read was Neverwhere and I loved it so much I immediately became a huge fan of his. So of course I wanted to read American Gods as well. I will say I have a slight bias because nothing compares to Neverwhere for me personally but I still enjoyed this book. I felt that I had a bit of a decline in interest when I read the first few chapters; I found it a little difficult to get in to. Once the story line picked up however, it became something I didn't want to put down. As usual, Gaiman shows his brilliance when it comes to imagery and suspense in this book. The story is very well told but in my opinion the main character, Shadow's story did not interest me enough to make it one of those books you can't put down.

This book was an amazing mix of modern times and the ancient gods, the twists are great, unexpected, but accepted by your mind as another element of the imagery, characters, and plot of this
adventure. If you're like me and you like to think about things, understand the abstract, etc, philosophy, or crazy interesting topics, you'll love this book, and it'll certainly leave you sommething to think about. Fantasy/sci fi, and thought provoking, how can you ask for more?