American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Finished reading this book. I knew this book from the Neil Gaiman short stories "Fragile things". After 'fragile', I was so keen on this book that I ordered it online from Amazon Japan. That was the first time I bought things online. It is very convenient in Japan, after placing an order, an email will notify the payment number, and one can pay in any convenience store in Japan. However, one can only pick up the goods from Lawson. Although there are no Lawson near my apartment in walking distance, there's a Lawson in 10 minutes bicycle rides from my apartment. I chose to pick up there.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The book centered around gods, as the tittle suggested. It told of gods were created when the immigrants to America brought along their beliefs. So, there were all sorts of gods, Europeans, native Americans, Asians, Africans, etc. There were new gods too, like media, internet, car ......... For example, the people nowadays spent too much time in front of TV, so it created TV god because people sacrifice their time or love to the TV. Quite odd, but in my family belief, apart from the deity statue that we prayed in our house, other dolls or figures were not allowed on the altar because according to my mom, since we pray everyday to the god, the figurine or doll (something with eyes) will become spirited or jin (a Malay word for you know what) after a period of time. I think the theory was around the same. 

However, due to my Asian roots, I am not so familiar with the old gods from the story. Even 'Odin', I only knew from the movie 'Thor'. It talked about a man called Shadow, a former inmate who was somehow tricked into working with a Mr. Wednesday (Odin). This Mr. Wednesday wanted to raise a war between the old gods and new gods because he fed on sacrifices. It told of the journey of Shadow and how he became understood to the trick that Mr. Wednesday ran on him. Mr. Wednesday fed on sacrifice, while another god, Loki fed on wars and chaos. They wanted to raise a war to become more powerful or something like that. At the climax, Shadow showed up and told all the gods about the scheme that Odin and Loki ran on them and asked them to go back because America was not a good place to become a god. So, a war was avoided.

Along the story line, there were stories on how the gods were bring into the America. Like a woman sent to America due to penal transportation and she brought along Bucca, snubnosed piskies, apple-tree man and son on from the British folk lore. And the forced slaves from Africa brought the Papa 'Legba, voudon serpent, and so on from the Africa platoon. It was quite an informative read. 

At the end of the story, Shadow met another Odin in Iceland. This Odin said 'he was me,yes. But I am not him' when Shadow accused him of the things he done. It made me think about a political and lawyer's scandal in Malaysia, and the sentence went viral " it looks like me and sounds like me, but it's not me". The lawyer answered this in a court. Very funny, this man was very thick skin.