Neil Gaiman has made his career out of writing about Gods. His Sandman dealt with Gods in varying forms and to varying degrees. In the Sandman storyline Seasons of the Mists, Gaiman dealt with varying Gods. Many of whom had lost power and were still trying to recapture it. The idea of ancient Gods losing powers and desperately trying to recapture them is one of Gaiman’s favorite themes and he deals with that here. In American Gods, Gaiman mostly works with the ancient Norse Gods, but they could be any other ones as well.. So, what are these American Gods?

Shadow has just been let out of prison, but it’s not as happy as an event as he hoped. His wife was having sex with his best friend Robbie (who had a job lined up for Shadow) in a car when they had an accident and both died. Shadow decides to take on a job of bodyguard for a strange old man named Wednesday. Wednesday is going around American visiting old friends and trying to get them to rally together for a cause. Wednesday is really Odin (the Norse God) and he is trying to get all of the old Gods together to fight against the new Gods (Television, Internet, etc) that people worship nowadays.

The journey is horrifying and educating for Shadow. He is guided on his journey by his late wife, whose shadow (so to speak) will talk to him due to a magic coin that he placed on her grave. None of the old gods are willing to stand with Wednesday until he is murdered. The old Gods rally around Wednesday’s death and gather for the war with the new Gods. As Shadow watches, he soon realizes that the war is not what it seems and that Wednesday may have been playing him for a fool.

It’s obvious that Gaiman loves stories about powerful beings using and losing their powers. There were several stories in Sandman where Gaiman dealt with Gods who have lost their powers to newer Gods. And this story is in that same vein. The writing and story flow along in a magical path. Gaiman is a wonderful writer who works with myth and legend as if he had created them. With American Gods, Gaiman has gone back over roads he had traveled before and found something new. It is a magical look into Gods and the lure of new power while having to deal with the loss of their old power and influence. Highly recommended.