A story about the last time I consumed "American Gods: A Novel" — 1 day ago
This was my second attempt at reading this. This time I won! But only because I so badly wanted to get to the end of it in order to be able to lay claim to a real opinion (in contrast to the measly half-opinion I could offer after drifting off around p200-ish on my first reading).
Really, I think my problems this time round were similar to my first try, albeit mitigated a bit by enjoying the “in-betweeny” stories someone else mentions below, the first of which I hadn’t got to by the time I gave up first time round. His writing style and I don’t seem to gel. And I note this with surprise, because I enjoyed his ‘Sandman’ stuff; and didn’t half-mind ‘Stardust’; but it might be the same problem I had with ‘Neverwhere’ some several years ago, and certainly that made me had to stop ‘Good Omens’ halfway through (though at that point I blamed it on Pratchett’s involvement). Thematically there’s nothing about it that bothers me, and it’s smartly done and all, but I just feel like there’s something missing… depth? I couldn’t get up an interest in Shadow’s character at all. The other characters even less so, but it’s particularly bothersome in a main character, who felt to me all surface and nothing of any interest beneath. Maybe it’s just thinking about it in light of the reviewer below who mentions her “very feminine bookclub” reading this, but it reads to me as more masculine than I’m into in writing style.
The story, hard to get into, all came together in the end, but I just didn’t care by then, just wanted to get to the end and move onto the next thing on my list. I’m sorry to report I really didn’t get much of anything out of this one. Bummer!








