The publishers of American Gods proudly proclaim that Neil Gaiman is "as good as Stephen King". To an extent they're right.

Like most Stephen King novels American Gods is over-written, self-indulgent and padded to twice its natural length.

Unlike King's novels, American Gods remains interesting despite the bloat.

The core concept of the novel is a familiar one: gods exist because people believe in them. As people believe less, the gods lose their power. In this case the gods concerned are the myriad of different pantheons brought to America over the centuries by explorers, immigrants and slaves.

Today most of these old gods have little power. They exist amongst normal people and get by as best they can. For example Odin is reduced to using his little remaining power to seduce woman and make money as a grifter.

The novel's protaganist is a man called Shadow. As the story begins, Shadow is reaching the end of a three year prison sentence and looking forward to returning home to his wife. Days before his release he hears that his wife has been killed in a car accident.

On his journey home, Shadow meets the strange "Mr Wednesday" who offers him a job. The nature of the job is vague - running errands, taking messages, hurting people if necessary. We quickly learn that Mr Wednesday is in fact Odin, Wotan, the All Father.

From here on Shadow gets drawn into the world of the gods. He's become involved at a bad time - war is brewing. The old gods are gearing up for a final showdown with the new gods such as the internet and media. Killing a god is not easy but it can be done.

And that's really most of the plot. Despite being over six hundred poages in length little more than that actually happens. Shadow and Wednesday flit around the country trying to recruit old gods and occasionally having run-ins with new ones. A couple of subplots and the occasional twist help keep things flowing. Eventually we come to the final battle, the outcome of which I won't spoil.

Most of the rest of the book consists of Gaiman weaving traditional mythology into modern America. Almost every god or pantheon you've ever heard of gets at least a name check somewhere. There are also a number of historic sequences that recap how certain gods arrived in America. These are on the whole totally unnecessary but highly interesting.

So, this is undoubtedly an over-written book. I mean, it has both an Epilogue and a Postscript! The plot is not strong enough to support more than half the book's length.

Yet I enjoyed it tremendously. This is probably because I'm interested in the subjects covered; trying to be objective, as a novel American Gods doesn't really work.

If you're interested in mythology, folklore and comparative religion then the chances are you'll love this book. Otherwise leave well alone.