“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”

For much of history, religion was a dominating force in human history, and a central focus of human life. Today, at least in the West, that faith has faltered, and people no longer spend their Sundays in church. Many of us, however, still spend our Sunday in ritual, whether it is watching football, hiking with family, or surfing the internet. These, Gaiman suggests, are our new gods: having evolved with a need for faith, the modern world has simply changed where it places that faith, from Odin and Zeus to airplanes, the internet, and conspiracy theories.

American Gods blends Americana, fantasy, and mythology into a heady brew. It won a wide range of awards when it was released, including Hugo, Nebula, Locus, SFX Magazine, and others. It is also, rather conveniently, a great read: fun and engaging, with splashes of serious mixed in. Most of the book follows Shadow, an ex-con who hires on to help Mr. Wednesday, an old god that seeks to resist the growing power of the new gods.

American Gods also covers a great cast of minor characters, gods both old and new: Technical Boy, the incarnation of our belief in the internet, to Mr. Nancy, representing the trickster spider-man Anansi from African folklore. We also hear how these gods arrived in America, carried by their believers as they were exiled from the old world, captured as slaves, or simply emigrated.

I read the more recent extended edition, about 12,000 words longer than the book’s original form. Either, I suspect, is interesting, and can make for an excellent summer read: if you need to relax, the story itself is fun, and if you’re in the mood to think, there’s a lot of depth behind it.

“People gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and tun with the cards and lose themselves in the coins, in the slots. They want to know they matter.”

“We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness.”

“The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.”