Customer Comments

expectdelays has commented on (2) products.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

expectdelays, June 2, 2010

I love reading this book, not just the first time but every time since as well. I sometimes open it to a random page for a quick dose of excellent prose, fascinating characters, and masterful storytelling.

"American Gods" approaches the same theme of Douglas Adams' "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" and Tom Robbins' "Jitterbug Perfume": the fates of gods when men abandon them. These three remarkable works describe divinities whose actual presence in our world originates with and depends on man's belief in them. As belief in them wanes so do they. How gods and men react to this is, in the hands of each of these authors, simply riveting.

Gaiman populates his novel with deities from an astonishing range of time and beliefs without presenting a catalog of pantheons. While most of them appear only briefly or are mentioned in passing, Gaiman's gives them all an intriguing immediacy. As he depicts the main characters briefly interacting with various gods I had repeated moments of "oh, I know who that is," that can I only describe as, well, primal.

This was my first experience reading a full-length piece by Gaiman and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys excellent writing.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

expectdelays, April 9, 2008

I had wanted a quick and easy read as a break from studying, so I suppose technically I was disappointed. I became engrossed in this story immediately. This isn't so much a monster story as a description of human civilization reacting to an inexorable and universal assault that threatens its continued existence.

Brooks' depiction of the early stages of the war is fascinating. The secrecy over the initial outbreaks, the many mechanisms enabling the contagion to spread quickly and internationally, the different responses, if any, by various governments, and the breakdown of order, infrastructure and society itself.

The structuring of the book as an oral history allows for diverse characters whose stories give the narrative a gripping immediacy and intimacy. This device also provides Brooks with an arena for writing some truly outstanding dialog. His characters come from around the globe and all walks of life, and Brooks manages to give them all a distinct persona based not only what they say but on how they say it. His portrayals display an enormous range of speech patterns, from the clipped, precisely ordered diction of a career military man and the and smug, defensive patter of a fabulously wealthy profiteer to the hesitant, halting speech of some of the deeply scarred survivors. Brooks also manages to provide a sense of the language underlying the speech of his many characters who use English as a second language. Brooks' use of dialog alone is a remarkable achievement.

As an oral history, this is of course a collection of survivor's stories. Brooks provides plenty of action and drama including last minute escapes and the fight to survive in a polluted, ravaged landscape. There are heroes and victims, brilliance and incompetence, nobility and depravity, determination and despair.

And lots of zombies.

A great read.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(9 of 14 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment