The special thing about Gaiman's works is that they are not really out of this world. His stories take place in a twilight zone - a dream state between myth and reality in which things are possible that seem rational absurd and not on first glance in a "logical order". That is why, as I noticed Gaiman act stories on new readers often confusing or simply pointless. A friend who "American Gods" read, put it at the beginning of the reading of so that he could ever discover any "red thread". Eventually, though, "grabbed" it him and he then said that this was one of the books that have really impressed him sustainably. A bit on the content: Shadow (a descriptive name) is released early from prison because his wife was killed in an accident. He asks why he now wants nor ever roam free because he has nothing left: no woman he loved more than anything, no job, no money, no family, no close friends. He sets out on a journey without a destination, while facing the Dumbledore-stick Wednesday, the claims to be (rightly, as you know later) the god Odin to be and who employs him as a bodyguard. Shadow miwws for Wednesday, inter alia, with Irish leprechauns and Street Kids Deities. At the same time increases Shadows wife from the grave and sets out to search for him, because they have to tell him something important (a bizarre Cathy / Heathcliff variant that works but). Shadow still learning about other deities, such as Thot = Mr Ibis, who works as a funeral director and a rustic slave God, who ekes out a butcher. Between the sections of the main story Gaiman scatters a recaps, in which he describes how the old gods came to America: the faith and the traditional myths of immigrants they brought with them. Again, one may ask, what is this? What you want: Gaiman shows how our imagination produces figures that are so real that one at the end "know" how to act in certain situations, such as her character is - because they are a part of ourselves. At the end of the novel, therefore Wodans myth must take place, where Shadow takes on the central role and makes himself into a kind of god. Of course, the book remains at the end but somehow puzzling, but this is what should be good fantastic literature make: that not everything has to be absolutely "clarified". Because even a dream is indeed explicable, but can not be equated with real events.
Some help is Gaiman finally in the novella "Monarch of the Glen" in his story collection "Fragile Things": here he explains the repeating of the myth (the "monster" is defeated again and lives yet again, to be defeated again ) and gives an indication of who really is Shadow.
