American Gods by Neil Gaiman

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, is an epic book.

(You might wonder at the three covers...but I find them all beautiful. None, incidentally, is the one I read.) 

Why do I call a book epic? Because its about 600 hundred pages? Well. That might just be large. (Actually, this is fantasy, and thats probably just about average for the genre.) Do I call it epic because it is about a mind boggling concept - that Gods exist, and that we take them with us when we go to different places, and our belief in them determines how powerful they are? Well. That's just a wonderful concept, but I've seen something similar, and I still wouldnt call it epic. No, I think the epicness about the book is that it deals with a whole country - America - and the Gods of a hundred different religions. It deals with large-scale battles fought in landscapes humanity cant even understand, and most of the book relies on things you can even imagine, actually, and yet the author still manages to leave you feeling like you know the characters, and understand them, and you start to care for them. 

I think the biggest reason for this is the main character. Shadow is just amazing. He starts the book in prison, and is hit by the shock of his life - the death of his beloved wife, within the first twenty pages or so of the book. He's devastated, but brave - and then he enters the service of Mr. Wednesday, an odd guy who seems to have too much money and claims to be a God. Through the course of the book, Shadow's life is torn apart, he is faced with numerous revelations, and he finally learns how to be alive - and he's the reason I could stay hooked on to the book. Because Shadow is so very human, and yet so very interesting, that he balances out the extreme oddities of the various Gods without becoming annoying or boring. Other, supporting characters, are also great - especially people like Mr. Wednesday and Anansi, and the Zorya sisters, are really wonderfully written and deep and beautifully portrayed - and they add to the book in great ways. 

But thats not the only reason why the book is amazing. The book is also amazing because of its plot. The entire book is a huge metaphor that juxtaposes the old religions with the new ones (technology, media, internet - the gods of the 21st century) and thus questions the role and importance of religion in our life. And there are many other themes - love, honesty, beauty, death, life, and the secret costs of a perfect life that add layers and layers to this book. I'm already looking forward to a re-read because I know the book will be full of new layers to uncover - a sure sign that the book is a good one. The book is helped by the author's writing style - somewhat rambling, full of many points-of-view and unafraid to deal with both sorrow and death. 

Final thoughts: Bold, imaginative, epic. You're going to love American Gods if you like to examine the role of religion in your life, if you like fantasy, or if you just plain like odd. Because this book is definitely odd, but a good kind of odd. This author is starting to climb my list of favorites.  

And Thereby Hangs a Tale by Jeffrey Archer

And Thereby Hangs a Tale, by Jeffrey Archer, was exactly as I had expected it to be: Fabulous.


A little background. I have read almost every Archer novel or short story collection. And naturally, when my mother mentioned that he had a new short-story collection that had come out, I was very excited. But I did forget about it at the time, until I went to the bookstore recently and saw the book. And then there was suddenly a light-bulb on my head, and I bought it almost immediately. But then I got to reading Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman, and my mom and dad started reading this book, so I left it alone for a while. Until yesterday, when I read the whole book in one day straight.

What can I say? The master has not lost his touch.

I love Archer first off all for his ingenious plots. He always has a unique story to tell (or at least a crazily unique twist on a seemingly normal story idea). He is able to right on a large variety of topics: from, to give you an example from this set of short stories, the story of a boy who falls in love with a girl as a light changes from red to green, to a story of how a golf ball can change a man's life, to a story of an amazing jewel theft with a stick of chewing gum as an accomplice. No matter what he's writing about, Archer never fails to astound. In this collection, there are a set of stories that seem, on the surface, pretty straight-forward, but really get you thinking at the end - not only about the plot but about the well developed, interesting characters whose story we are reading.

The writing, as always, is of amazing quality. Succinct, simple, and moving, his language is beguiling in its plainness. He writes tersely, keeping the plot moving (which is even more important in short-stories than in a full-length novel) and there is never a moment in the books where you feel like you're bored and want to skip ahead a few paragraphs - in fact, the book will often make you feel like you want to slow down and think a little bit about what's going on - only you will not want to stop till the final page is turned. While I was reading the book (and my mother has expressed a similar reaction) I would often stop for nearly ten minutes after each story just to process what all had happened, which is of course one of the characteristics of a good Archer story.

His characterization, as I mentioned above, is pretty spectacular. As an author who writes mainly about characters who are doing crimes, and that too in the relatively constrained format of a short-story, he is able to bring his characters out of cliches and make them unique, and (in the case of most of them) even like-able. Even though his characters often do bad things for bad reasons (love and money are the two top reasons - they are not in any way justified by stuff like "he needed the money for his little sister's heart operation) you can still empathize with them because of the way Archer writes - by making us go deep into the mind and the life of the character.

In this collection you will find love, crime, money, fraud, law and golf - all packaged very neatly in Archer's spectacular writing. Definitely worth buying for hours of entertainment, followed by more hours of entertainment after some time when you re-read the books and discover that you missed something crucial in your first reading. Read for a fun roller-coaster ride type experience, for page-turning suspense, and to be blown away.

Last words: Archer is one of the best fiction writers ever, and this collection proves that he hasn't lost his touch. Read only if you're prepared to look up at 1 am and realize, "I meant to sleep hours ago but time just flew away when I was reading the book."

And Thereby Hangs a Tale.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

Fragile Things is an odd book.

I knew it was going to be an odd book the moment I picked it up. The point was whether it was going to be a good kind of odd or bad kind of odd.

It turned out to be a good kind of odd.

A little background. I had heard of Neil Gaiman, mostly in connection with George R. R. Martin. I was planning to read a book by him sometime, especially because he's one of the few fantasy authors whose books come in the book store here. Of course, my buying this book would have involved days of research, days of reading reviews, and days of deciding whether this was the best book to start with. However, what ended up happening was this: I saw the book, with its shiny white cover, lying on the bookshelf. It called to me. I picked it up, read the back. I was intrigued. I sat down to read to read the introduction.

I was hooked.

The book called to me, and I'm so glad I replied.

Fragile Things is a book about, well, Fragile Things. Like Neil Gaiman puts it in the book - "It seemed like a fine title for a book of short stories. There are so many fragile things, after. People break so easily, after all, and so do dreams and hearts."

But for a book that is about transitory things, Fragile Things is still a very hopeful book. As a book, Fragile Things seems to be celebrating the beauty of all the soap water bubbles in the world that are so beautiful and so easy to break. At its heart, Fragile Things is a book about hope, and fairy tales, and about writing that lives longer than the person who wrote it.

There are many strange stories and poems in this collection, from a story about a boy who makes friends with a ghost that is told by the months of the year, to a poem about what to do when you're in a fairytale, to a story about Susan, from C.S. Lewis' Narnia novels, the dismissal of which Gaiman (and I, incidentally) found very problematic and irritating. There are stories which don't make sense immediately. There are stories which leave you thinking. There are funny stories, sad stories, scary stories. There is some 'upsettling' stuff in this novel, as well as some extremely sad stuff.

Read this book if you're not afraid to try something a little different. Read this book if you can deal with (or relish) a little bit of oddness. Read this book with an open heart and mind. Read this book without thinking about any 'fantasy' that you may have read before, because this book is not going to be like any of that. Read the introduction of each story/poem right before reading the story or poem because it will really add to your appreciation of the poem or story. Read this book if you're in for something new.

Don't be put-off if you read many unfamiliar names in the introductions. I can assure you that I did not know about 90% of the authors mentioned in the introductions, and that did not stop me from enjoying the book at all, though now I'm tempted to read all the authors mentioned and hear all the songs mentioned. I'm sure that a knowledge of the mentioned literature adds richness to the book, but it is not a prerequisite to reading the book.

This book is great (and quick) way to know whether or not you like Gaiman's style of writing. My verdict? I definitely want to read more. Maybe American Gods.

Last words: Read this book only if you're fine with things being a little bit out of the ordinary. Don't judge too quickly. Read it with a sense of humor. And get ready for a few hours of pure fun.