The Meat
Is there a
God? Or perhaps there are many? Is death The End? If, on the other hand, a
Supreme Being(s) exists, what implications does that have for our human
existence? We've all wondered about it. Is there an arbiter of my earthly
conduct, who, like Anubis, will weigh my soul and determine if I am
feather-light and bound for the celestial realms or heavy with transgression
and in for some good old fashioned torment? How would our behavior change (if
at all!) if we could know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that such a being is
up there somewhere—and is watching? Well, Chuck Wendig has an answer, albeit a
playful but gritty urban fantastical one: kill as many of those supernatural
scumbags as possible!
Almost from
page one, we can sense that there's something unusual about the world Wendig
presents, and very quickly, we figure out just what that nagging something is:
in this (dystopian!) universe, the gods and monsters are all too real, and all
too horrible. In fact, the line between god and monster ends up being pretty thin/bordering
on nonexistent, and everywhere the capriciousness of the gods as described,
say, in Ovid's Metamorphosis, each
with his (or, significantly, her) all too human failings like jealousy, petty
rivalries, and totally gratuitous cruelty, is on display. Easy enough, then, to
get behind the little vendetta Cason Cole (who is about as estranged from his
wife and kid as it is possible to be, really) and his mysterious ally Frank
(who has more scar tissue than face) launch against these supernatural jerks,
because after all, students of Greek mytho-history, for example, universally
long to administer a flying elbow on someone like Aphrodite for instigating the
Trojan War. No trouble at all to get into the mindset that giving gods a
thorough beat-down is probably a good idea.
But gods must
be incredibly tough to kill, right? Well...apparently not, since each has a
fatal weakness to a specific substance which human mythology, rather handily,
has recorded in some way, shape or form. Plus it's suggested that strong gods
can apparently smite wimpy gods without much effort, and refrain from doing so
solely out of class solidarity. It's all a little pat, but I'm prepared to
forgive Wendig this Superman-esque Kryptonite copout.
Any of this
sounding familiar? A story about a tough as nails man with some grade-A family
problems who encounters gods and whatnot and soon realizes he can a) hold his
own against them, and even better b) play them off against each other, but c)
might himself not be quite as ordinary as he seems? Yeah, that's ringing an American Gods-shaped bell loud and clear,
and unfortunately Wendig hasn't really moved out of Neil Gaiman's giant shadow
here.
American Gods and Monsters, by Nuck Wendigan--no, wait a minute...
On the
other hand, there are far worse places to be, stylistically and even creatively
speaking, than in the shadow of Gaiman's greatness, so while he loses points for
reproducing a story similar enough to that of American Gods that the P-word popped into my head, Wendig has
produced quite an entertaining novel here. It may lack Gaiman's effortless
pithiness and thought-provoking philosophical overtones, perhaps (Gaiman is
British, after all, and everyone knows those guys have the Midas touch when
writing), but it's still a page-turner that grabs you at the beginning and
keeps a vice-like grip on your attention till the end (even though by the end,
the similarities between Shadow, from American
Gods, and Wendig's protagonist Cason are getting pretty extreme).
Wendig—rather
boldly, I would say—also indirectly includes the Christian God and angels
(including the fallen ones) in his story, suggesting they're simply part of the
vast pantheon of human belief, though there's no fistfight between Cason and
God, sad to say. Unlike Gaiman, Wendig never comes right out and explains the
mechanism, as it were, behind the gods' existence—whether they exist and draw
power solely from human faith, or if their existence is independent of human
action—which is kind of a problem, since the world he's created consequently lacks
the clarity of Gaiman's vision, in which gods' power and very existence are
dependent on human worship and belief. In Wendig's view, why are some gods
stronger than others? This is one mystery that is never explained.
Regardless,
if the standard of a novel's success is how entertained the reader feels while
reading and what kind of mental aftertaste the story leaves, Wendig has done
his job well indeed!
The Math
Baseline score: 8/10
Bonuses: +1 for the awesome line "the ants weigh more
than the elephants", + 1 for creating a vivid, gritty world where a tough
guy battles it out with the gods
Penalties: -2 for coming perilously close to copying American Gods in the process, and -1 for
not being as good as said masterwork (which you should read!)
Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 A mostly enjoyable experience
