For this week I started reading
American Gods, a novel by Neil Gaiman that takes various mythologies from
different cultures and melds them into the contemporary world. It follows a
character by the name of Shadow Moon, an ex-con recently released from prison,
who meets a strange man called Wednesday. Wednesday turns out to be the
incarnation of Odin who wants Shadow to help him rally up Old gods. It also turns
out that there are gods all over America with folklores from Slavic, African,
Egyptian, and other various cultures.
What
I love about this book is the variety of characters and use of different
cultures. Gods are turned into
normal everyday people much like in the Percy Jackson series. Although they are
gods, they all have their distinct personalities that make them human and sometimes
the American culture takes a toll on the Gods. For example, in the story there
was a Leprechaun named Mad Sweeney that had been living so long in America that
he no longer had an Irish accent. A lot of the characters in this story are
very believable. Through this book, Gaiman basically explains how this country
has become a huge melting pot of different cultures from around the world.
I
like how Gaiman can take mythological characters and make them fit into our own
society. In his novel The Graveyard Book, he does exactly the same. He makes
vampires and werewolves into everyday people and they have to fit their way
into our world. It’s very relevant today where people coming to America from
other countries must adapt to our ways just to make a living.
I’m
definitely becoming a bigger fan of this genre. I like to see how writers try
and fit mythological and fantasy elements into the modern world.
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