Depending on your outlook about the subject matter, American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, is either remarkably imagined, impossibly bleak, or a combination of those two extremes. Gaiman himself poses no easy answers to the questions of faith and the supernatural world, having written a novel that could be seen as the inverse of Stephen King’s The Stand.

King’s work portrayed dueling forces drawing opposed factions of humanity to their banners in the ultimate battle between good and evil–a conflict to decide the fate of mankind. Even one of King’s central baddies, Randal Flagg, had a lastname appropriate to his purpose. Gaiman provides the opposite scenario: here, his powers could fight a savage war amongst themselves, and it’s strongly implied that not only would the average human be unaffected, they wouldn’t even notice. And his protagonist, known only as Shadow, could also be seen as a man with a name apropos to his role.

(Warning: Minor spoilers lie ahead.) Read the rest of this entry →