Neil Gaiman has put up his book American Gods to read for free at the Harper Collins site. You can get to it here. American Gods is very enjoyable fantasy-fiction with a plotline featuring Gods from various cultures tranplanted to American soil (the immigrants bought their Gods with them). The Gods live among people and are duking it out amongst each other for relevance and survival in modern time and settings, the key conflict being among the Gods of yore and the new Gods of the technology. If you wish to look below the surface there’s a commentary on America’s identity as an immigrant nation and what immigrants bring to the cultural. I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the fantasy-fiction genre and/or wants to read a good story.
Neil Gaiman is among my favorite authors and I have read (and own) almost everything put out by him. He is a fantastic storyteller with a prodigious imagination and he along with Terry Pratchett wrote my all-time favorite Good Omens – a funny, masterful and intelligent satire that combines Terry Pratchett’s zany humor and Gaiman’s dark atmosphere and character constructions. Gaiman also built the elaborate mythology of the 10 books of the Sandman graphic novels, a series that is reputed to have lifted the comic book format to appeal to a more mature audience (and in the process turn into graphic novels). A lot of his work, including Neverwhere, Stardust, and now Coraline has been translated to celluloid and television.
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