“Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”

It took me almost two months to finish the book due to my hectic schedule, but yet I managed to finish it. It is a long book, in fact one of the longest fiction I’ve ever read, and I thought that it would be great. But, I was wrong.

The novel starts off well, the main characters are evocatively developed and the hints about the upcoming war between old gods of blood and trickery coming up against new modern gods of plastic and wire really intrigued me. Gaiman’s writing manner is sturdy yet simple to read and uncluttered with needless writing tricks and flamboyant semantics, but he took an incredibly long time to get to a very insignificant point. It is something that frustrates me all through my reading. Every-time I flipped the page, I just kept on waiting for the payoff and the brilliance as I expected, but sadly enough it never happen. A very anticlimactic read so to speak. However, I really like how the author renders his imagination with all the background mythology flashbacks and very thankful for my new-found basic knowledge of African, Norse, Egyptian, Hindu and pagan European gods and pantheons. Even though the author can accomplish that in less than four parts, twenty chapters and 588 pages.

Still and all, the author has succeeded in portraying the uniqueness of America that I don’t get to see or know on typical media over here in my country. The hidden world, the roadside attraction that the protagonist has seen throughout the book is something that are so different from how America is portrayed in Hollywood films, books and television. If you’re an American, or a person with a deep fascination with Americans’ unique elements and way of life, I bet you’ll find this novel so dear to your heart. The problem with other reader like me, too much of it will only jumble us up in senseless confusion that doesn’t help with the plot at all. A roadtrip nonetheless, but not an epic saga.

It is definitely not a light vacation reading or a novel that can be easily digested, the plot is very slow and runs into so many walls, you’ll feel like you’re an ant in a giant maze. The concept and idea behind this book seemed so nifty and high in potential at first, but it didn’t really play out well in a way that engaged me. I was expecting something deep, meaningful, and epic, however the author just keep on teasing me on each page and he lingered too long and never really delivered anything memorable nor fantastic. It felt like the whole book is like a huge tease! It is magnificence in some way, but failed to make a big long lasting impression, it just feels like an overambitious fiasco of an allegory.

I’m not that disappointed as this was my first time reading anything by Neil Gaiman (although I was expecting more from a famed author), but I’m upset by the outcome and time consumed to finish this book. Not to mention the flaws that overbalanced the fun of reading it for me. Maybe it takes a couple of readings to take it all in, I might even re-read it again, but at the time being I think I’ll just stick to my normal read, non-fictions.