There is a question that Neil Gaiman himself asks in both the introduction and the afterward of the tenth-anniversary edition of AMERICAN GODS. To paraphrase, he ruminates on the inadvisability of an Englishman writing down a tribute to America (namely, "how dare you?") and, conversely, the amount of praise and approval that his work has garnered from the American people. As a self-considered connoisseur of all that is middle American, I considered his nationality in my reading but ultimately felt the materialization of a sort of respectful love for the country between the pages of the novel. Not the love of a patriot per se, but that of a "stranger in a strange land," where the sheer size and diversity of the country inspires both awe and ennui in a traveler.

AMERICAN GODS rifles through the American atlas, stopping off in small Wisconsin towns, in Chicago, Indiana, Kansas, Vegas, and others. It tumbles down roads that have no signs and roads that have far too many signs for attractions like "Rock City" and the "House on the Rock". It's a peculiar sort of fantasy novel, one that is often more "fantastic" than "fantasy." In a way, it's a small town story or perhaps many small town stories that have been shackled to something much bigger and greater, a something that seems as if it has been around, in those same small towns, since the very beginning. Too vague? It's a difficult book to describe, one of those rare books whose mood has more effect on the reader's consciousness than the actual plot.

Gaiman states in his introduction that people tend to either love AMERICAN GODS with great extravagance or virulently hate it with a frequently-voiced passion. It's a strange sort of book- one that reads almost as a metaphor that never quite fully materializes. It is not a book for sunny days (much like Gaiman's other works in that respect) but one whose reading feels almost like grief or emptiness for the bulk of the pages. There is a peace and a splendor to some chapters and an empty sort of anger in the reading of others. It seems virtually impossible to predict whether a given reader will love or hate the work- I can only say with certainty that it continues to capture the imagination long after the final page.