Neil Gaiman

I keep meaning to not like Gaiman. The worst thing he ever had a hand in was Stardust, which was still pretty okay, but everything he's done- Neverwhere, the Sandman Series, Good Omens (which by the way, was the funniest book that I have ever read), they all seem so fucking twinkied out, all gods and gothy bullshit, all of it managed to be completely absorbing without ever trying too hard to seem intellectual or important.

American Gods is about the Old Gods (Odin, Anansi, Kali, etc.) verses the new gods- the gods of TV and the telephone. Which sounds like the premise for one of Harlan Ellison's lamer short stories, but Gaiman pulls it off. I kept trying not to like it. When I first picked it up I saw a blurb from Steve Erickson on the back and I thought, "Bullshit. Nobody deserves a blurb like that from Erickson. Especially not a fucking comic book writer." But it did.

I read somewhere that one of the things that a writer has to deal with is worrying that what is written has to mean something. American Gods doesn't mean anything. But neither did Spider-Man, and you should see how Jonny freaked out about it. Neil Gaiman is a badass, and he writes like Stephen King should have, if King hadn't lost his soul 9,000 novels back.

Rating: 8 out of a totally arbitrary 11.