I loved the premise of American Gods, but ultimately the writing was just too bad for me to overlook. Most of that had to do with the character of Shadow. He had no character. At first I thought, okay, his name is Shadow, I understand that he's supposed to be more like a symbolic placeholder than a real living breathing human character, which would account for the fact that he kind of bounces around the book without ever reacting to anything... Or without ever saying or doing anything interesting. But because of that, I completely couldn't buy the Laura subplot. I assume that Shadow was feeling, I dunno, angst or loss or horror or something when Laura came back from the dead, but the prose never says or shows any of that.
Laura ended being as much of a personality-less cardboard placeholder as Shadow. And because of that I just. didn't. care. what happened to either of them. Their relationship had zero chemistry, there was no emotion whatsoever wrought out of what should have been a deeply emotional story, etc.
So then we get to the latter part of the book, and Shadow actually starts doing things instead of walking around like a zombie. And every time he gets up and does something, I go "WTF where did that come from?" because, you know, he has no personality, and no motivations for doing... anything.
Shadow ties himself to a tree for some sort of Viking funeral rite or whatever. And I go "WTF where did that come from?"
Shadow takes the coin away from Laura and kills her again. And I go "WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM?!" No buildup. No explanation. Never, once, do we get inside the heads and experience the emotions of either of these characters, except for that one time that Shadow is reminiscing about Laura's chili. We don't know why Shadow is trying to save Laura, he just does, for some reason. We don't know why Shadow decided not to crack open the skull of a thunderbird and decides to kill Laura instead... He just does. For the entire book Shadow has been floating around and trying to find out how to save Laura in his usual boring and personality-less way, and then all of a sudden... He betrays her trust and takes away her coin. And still manages to do so in the most boring and personality-less way possible. And at moment, for me, illustrated how completely pointless and senseless the entire Shadow/Laura thing was in the first place.
And at the end when Shadow finds the body of the girl in the lake and confronts whats-his-face... Yeah. At that point I didn't care. Shadow isn't a character, he's just a person that does things. He's the person that does things that Neil Gaiman needs to get done in order for the plot to progress. He's the person who exists to meet the other colorful and fun characters of the book, but not a character himself.
And that frustrated me, because Neil Gaiman is usually so good at writing characters. But when the "main character" of American Gods is more a walking plot device than a character himself, I just couldn't care about the story, the book, or him.
Also, there were some things about the mythology aspect that annoyed me. Like Kali showing up in the Hall of Gods that are No Longer Worshipped (or whatever that place was). Yeah. Not like a billion people still worship Kali and thousands of festivals aren't held in her honor every year, or anything. Also, the Easter Goddess. Oh Neil Gaiman, you should know better than that. There is no Easter Goddess, and Easter is (believe it or not) the ONLY Christian holiday that actually isn't yoinked from a pagan festival. It's a popular common misconception that Easter is actually a perverted pagan Goddess/fertility festival, but more than a few minute's worth of research will show one that such is not the case. (Or maybe a couple months rather than a few minutes. I actually wrote a fifty-page paper debunking the Easter = Goddess worship thing in college. Really, if I could find that out, then Neil Gaiman should really know better.)
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Laura ended being as much of a personality-less cardboard placeholder as Shadow. And because of that I just. didn't. care. what happened to either of them. Their relationship had zero chemistry, there was no emotion whatsoever wrought out of what should have been a deeply emotional story, etc.
So then we get to the latter part of the book, and Shadow actually starts doing things instead of walking around like a zombie. And every time he gets up and does something, I go "WTF where did that come from?" because, you know, he has no personality, and no motivations for doing... anything.
Shadow ties himself to a tree for some sort of Viking funeral rite or whatever. And I go "WTF where did that come from?"
Shadow takes the coin away from Laura and kills her again. And I go "WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM?!" No buildup. No explanation. Never, once, do we get inside the heads and experience the emotions of either of these characters, except for that one time that Shadow is reminiscing about Laura's chili. We don't know why Shadow is trying to save Laura, he just does, for some reason. We don't know why Shadow decided not to crack open the skull of a thunderbird and decides to kill Laura instead... He just does. For the entire book Shadow has been floating around and trying to find out how to save Laura in his usual boring and personality-less way, and then all of a sudden... He betrays her trust and takes away her coin. And still manages to do so in the most boring and personality-less way possible. And at moment, for me, illustrated how completely pointless and senseless the entire Shadow/Laura thing was in the first place.
And at the end when Shadow finds the body of the girl in the lake and confronts whats-his-face... Yeah. At that point I didn't care. Shadow isn't a character, he's just a person that does things. He's the person that does things that Neil Gaiman needs to get done in order for the plot to progress. He's the person who exists to meet the other colorful and fun characters of the book, but not a character himself.
And that frustrated me, because Neil Gaiman is usually so good at writing characters. But when the "main character" of American Gods is more a walking plot device than a character himself, I just couldn't care about the story, the book, or him.
Also, there were some things about the mythology aspect that annoyed me. Like Kali showing up in the Hall of Gods that are No Longer Worshipped (or whatever that place was). Yeah. Not like a billion people still worship Kali and thousands of festivals aren't held in her honor every year, or anything. Also, the Easter Goddess. Oh Neil Gaiman, you should know better than that. There is no Easter Goddess, and Easter is (believe it or not) the ONLY Christian holiday that actually isn't yoinked from a pagan festival. It's a popular common misconception that Easter is actually a perverted pagan Goddess/fertility festival, but more than a few minute's worth of research will show one that such is not the case. (Or maybe a couple months rather than a few minutes. I actually wrote a fifty-page paper debunking the Easter = Goddess worship thing in college. Really, if I could find that out, then Neil Gaiman should really know better.)
Sorry for the tl;dr, but you did ask. ;)