American Gods
What happened to the old gods when their worshippers crossed the Atlantic? Gaiman's 2001 novel weaves folklore, Americana, and loneliness into something simultaneously epic and intimate. It won the Hugo for good reason.
The middle drags; readers say it “could benefit from losing about 100 or so pages from the dragging middle.” Shadow reads as passive and underwritten, “dullest hero I’ve ever read” to one reviewer, a man things happen to. The interlude chapters explaining how each god reached America are clunky exposition bolted beside the plot rather than woven in, and causality is thin enough that readers finish uncertain why one scene led to the next. There are “no actually good and well-developed female characters.” And after chapters of a war being promised, the climax resolves through talk, one reader fuming “if you tell me a war is coming, you better give me a war.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
