Product Description

After three years in prison, Shadow has done his time. But as the time until his release ticks away, he can feel a storm brewing. Two days before he gets out, his wife Laura dies in a mysterious car crash, in adulterous circumstances. Dazed, Shadow travels home, only to encounter the bizarre Mr Wednesday claiming to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America. Together they embark on a very strange journey across the States, along the way solving the murders which have occurred every winter in one small American town. But the storm is about to break... Disturbing, gripping and profoundly strange, Gaiman's epic new novel sees him on the road to the heart of America.

Includes extra material exclusive to Headline Review's edition

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2661 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Independent
‘This is a fantastic novel...runs as precisely as clockwork, but reads as smoothly as silk or warm chocolate’

Peter Straub
‘Poignancy, terror, nobility, magic, sacrifice, wisdom, mystery, heartbreak, and a hard-earned sense of resolution... Masterful storytelling’

Stephen King
‘Gaiman is, simply put, a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to have him’

Customer Reviews

can be used as door stopper
324 pages into the "story" (that's a bit more than half of this author's preferred edition in need of some serious editing) and nothing worth relating has happened. Shadow has been released from jail, went to a funeral, met a guy called Wednesday who is no less than the god Odin, met a few other gods, gave a lift to a hitch-hiker and was introduced half of the population of the town of the freezing town of lakeside.... Stiff boring... Unidimensional characters, no suspense or tension, never ending meandering, when you think that this book got a Nebula and a few other prizes... you wonder how low these award have fallen or how bad the competitors were when the prozes were given. Don't expect a Dan Simmons or a Frank Herbert here. Not even worth the paper it is printed on. Can be used as a door stopper though.

Acquired taste
Bought this at Christmas and read 1/3 through before becoming bored and moving onto something else-nothing happens, lead character has no charisma-if you like it then good on you but I have read far better books

Save yourself the time...
And read something else. I've managed 200 pages of this and I had to force myself. Having just reached a gruesome description of corpse dissection (serving no point that I can see) I have given up.
It feels flat, for want of a better word. The characters aren't at all engaging - the lead character utterly boring and even the gods so uninteresting it's impossible to imagine any mortal bowing down to them. I've read books on greek myths at school which conjured up more interest. It's all so detached - and dare I say it, trying to be clever rather than trying to create something engaging - that you end up so detached yourself it's impossible to care.
Must just say I liked 'Neverwhere' and 'Good Omens' very much and approached this one with very high hopes, no bias against or anything.