It's no Stardust. - Rated 
Neil Gaiman's mind must be a dark, weird and disturbing place. It's certainly a book to challenge the reader. Stardust it's not.
can be used as door stopper - Rated 
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 - Rated
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... - Rated
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.
Confusing Exciting Gripping Fabulous! - Rated 
I read a lot. I make a 50 min journey every morning to work, and the same back every day. So I read a lot. And since I've started reading this, I count myself fortunate that I get off at the last stop otherwise I'd have been late to work everyday for the last week! I just realise it's time to get off when the carriage empties!
I like the characters, I'm loving the story line (tho I've not finished it yet, so no spoilers here!), the dialogues are excellent, witty, sharp and yes in a crazy crazy way, believable...
So many sci-fi / fantasy books have fantastic story lines but such bad bad writing (dialogues in particular often make me cringe), that when I read one which actually can go on my litterature shelf it's just a relief!
The Gaiman books I've read so far are complex and confusing but in a good way: don't you just hate it when you've guessed the end before you're even half way through? The numerous characters are never the less real and solid; you get the feeling that these are characters who might be on the sidelines here, but could easily be central in a different story (like Mr Nancy here).
The plot here is no exception: Shadow is told his wife has died (I'm ashamed to say I laughed out loud when I found out how, gnii!) just on the day of his release from prison, and finds himself swept up by Mr Wednesday's crazy, seemingly nonsensical world, where old gods and new gods fight for America... Gaiman's humour is dark, grinding and very very sharp: I love it (and it's so un-pc: yay!)
I intend to savour the few chapters I have left to read slowly...
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