American Gods

American Gods remains one of my favorite books. It's been a while since I last picked it up, but with the new upcoming television series I had to revisit it.

This isn't a book I've ever been able to read quickly. The plot is slow and meandering, and I always take my time to meander through it. I just love spending time in this world where gods are real and dying. Where America is both a promise of a fresh start and a short attention span. I love the old, stubborn gods and the new, fragile, scared gods and all the little weird corners of this immense country I call home.

I'm really excited to see how the television adaption plays out. They're only doing 1/3 of the book in the first season, which actually makes sense plot-wise. It's everything before Shadow gets to Laketown, which would mean that Laketown takes up the entirety of season 2 which would be great. But for now there's still a lot of exciting stuff. And I'm interested to see how the "Coming to America" sections will be folded in to the rest of the story.

I'm glad that this book continues to hold up to re-reads. I'm still finding stuff that I either never noticed or forgot about, like Medusa's brief cameo. And then there are all the familiar beats that remain as lovely as the first time I came across them. This is a great story to sink into for a week or so. I can't wait for the tv series.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more