Reading Neil Gaiman can cause you to alter your behavior. Ever
since reading Gaiman's classic comic book series, THE SANDMAN --- I
can't remember exactly which of the early issues it was, #2 or #4
maybe --- where he took one of DC's really bad comic book bad guys
and turned him loose in a diner and...well, I don't sit with my
back to the door anymore.

Gaiman has been doing more with novels than with comic books
lately, demonstrating along the way that he can pretty well work in
any media that he pleases and almost instantly be better than
anyone else. He demonstrates this again with AMERICAN GODS.

AMERICAN GODS is going to alter behaviors. It will get people who
haven't been reading much lately reading again. It will inspire
would-be writers to blow the dust off of those spiral notebooks or
open up the laptop and give it a shot; Gaiman makes producing
incredible, groundbreaking work look all so easy. At the same time,
those of us who have been trying to put something together in bits
and pieces will give up after reading AMERICAN GODS; I mean, what's
the point? No one will ever come up with anything this good again.
AMERICAN GODS, in our own humble age, is a bona fide classic, a
book that people will be giving each other in leather-bound
editions 20, 30 years from now.

America is the land of second chances. And third, fourth, and fifth
chances, too, if you play things right. You can invent and reinvent
yourself, more than once or twice. Shadow is about to find this
out. Shadow has been doing time in prison, counting the days until
he gets out, gets back to his beautiful, too good to be true wife
Laura, and back to his old job, which his best friend is holding
for him. Everything he is waiting for, however, is swept away in an
instant on the eve of his release. On his way home from prison,
Shadow meets an enigmatic grifter who calls himself Mr. Wednesday
and who seems to know all-too-much about Shadow. When Wednesday
offers Shadow a job, he reluctantly accepts; he has nothing left to
lose. His employment leads to a wild night's ride that continues
for months, a road trip across the heart, land, and soul of
America, off the beaten path and into the rough, "behind the
curtain," if you will, where the audience never goes and really
does not belong. Shadow learns that everyone, from Wednesday to his
wife Laura to himself, has secrets, and that some secrets need to
be revealed and others are better buried forever. What is more
significant, however, is that Wednesday is leading Shadow into the
midst of the ending of a conflict that predates humanity and which
may result in an outcome without a winner. Along the way, Shadow
--- and the reader --- is shown an America that is readily familiar
but at the same time disturbingly alien. This is the America that
lurks underneath the billboards for roadside attractions, at the
woods edge, at the rest stop, the one at the edge of your visual
periphery, more sensed than seen.

Gaiman quite modestly acknowledges other authors who, he says,
tackled the themes of AMERICAN GODS before he ever got to them.
Gaiman not only tackles the themes --- the unseen seen, the players
and movers and shakers behind the curtains --- but brings them
down. There are also nods to Gaiman's comic book background: a
quick tribute to Frank Miller's RONIN and one of Marvel's most
enduring books; and Gaiman's narrative flows so well that I could
almost see his tale as sequential art, panel for panel, as it
unfolded. And when I finished I was left with the urge, still with
me as I write this, to hop into my car and motor west and south,
looking for the Rock House and Mr. Wednesday and Easter and Low-Key
and hoping that I would not find them. AMERICAN GODS, simply put,
is a masterpiece. You're gonna love it and never forget it.