Author: Neil Gaiman Title: American Gods Publisher: Headline I’m going to commit cult culture hari-kari here and admit publicly I have never read Neil Gaiman’s now-classic The Sandman series. Graphic novels don’t twist my nipples in the nicest of ways, so American Gods is my first introduction to the writer at whose altar a few of my best blogging buddies worship. I’d expected to be a little disappointed, perhaps made unsure by comments I’d read about the “fantastical” nature of Gaiman’s previous novels. I’m happy to say I wasn’t, and better still, was surprised by the quality and consistency of Shadow’s story. Shadow, a petty criminal recently released from jail on the day his wife and best friend die in a car accident, is befriended/ converted/ hustled by Mr Wednesday, a rogue stranger who offers Shadow a chance at a new life, simply by working for him. What begins as an unusual series of jobs turns into something far more serious as young kids in limousines, CIA-like thugs and a variety of other malcontents pursue Shadow and Wednesday, beating and torturing Shadow whilst Wednesday mysteriously disappears, his equally-enigmatic friends often the only ones to help rescue Shadow and set him back on his path. If that were all there was to the novel though I’d have cast it back amongst the other raised-cover truck stop novels. Thankfully it’s not - without giving too much away, American Gods is a serious piece of genre-bending, its over-arching plotline drawing on myths, religious and cultural figures across the continents and across history. It’s also a serious meditation on the role of technology in our lives, and how blind acceptance of empty promises leads us into trouble. Gaiman subverts his popular-fiction genre well, encouraging readers to go beyond the adventure narrative, to look beneath the texts of the main characters and analyse our own perceptions of religion, spirituality, materialism and cultural superiorities. American Gods should have been on the prize-winning lists this year, but it’s categorisation as pop lit has seen a complex text marginalised and pushed away from a deserving spotlight. From conversations I’ve had with Gaiman fans, the novel was worth waiting for and didn’t need any literary plaudits, and as a new reader I can say I’m hooked enough to want to explore his back catalogue. Ultimately it’s magical to see difficult issues worked through in approachable ways, and just as rewarding to have a novel encourage, rather than limit, ways of interpreting “reality”.