I, and every one of my friends who have read that book came away with a "That's it? This is the massive "OMG this is the greatest book ever!"...I don't get it.
Like I've read the book, cover to cover and it was..meandering and boring. I dig the concept but it seems to go no where. Like, are you suppose to not understand that its a bunch of old-world gods trying to make it in modern times? Is the big reveal making all the confusing stuff what is suppose to be the big "Omg amazing!" moment?
To me none of the characters really stand out. And while I've read the book..I couldn't tell you a thing about it other then some vague memory of the ending characters..cause it was at the end. No one else stands out.
I've seen plenty of people praise this book..but never understood why. I don't hate it or anything its just..it was just kinda 'meh'.
@bladededge: I thought American Gods was a good book with an imaginative plot and a fun take on its premise. The character of Shadow (that was his name, right?) was pretty vacant, but I thought the Gods themselves were all pretty fun and thoughtfully characterized.
However, I'd say that everything else I've read by Neil Gaiman has seemed either very YA, very derivative of his own work, or alternately very 'eh' so perhaps this is one of those things that comes down to just personal taste.
@bladededge: To me, it was Gaiman's sardonic style which made the book, coupled with the fact that you are actually able to predict the plot and what is going on if you have a good grasp on mythology and beliefs from all over the world. It's a fun "metagame" with the reader, as the plot actually lacks a "big reveal", since what the gods are doing and trying to do is a retread of their legends and Shadow lampshades it multiple times how obvious it is after a while and how quickly the plot would resolve itself if everyone paid attention to simple clues. This is what made it so much fun for me, personally. Similarly, it's why I enjoyed plenty of the sidequests in the Witcher 1 and 3 so much - a lot of them are direct allusions to Polish history and legends, so you can predict plenty of potential plot threads and resolutions based on that.
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