BOOK REVIEW : THE AMERICAN GODS by NEIL GAIMAN

Hello people... Let's start this post with an interesting insight ( at least from my point of view )....... Here's the thing: How important are the looks of the author while choosing a book to read??? Weird question huh!!! I disagree!!!
Looks of an author are as important as the storyline, the content, the characterization, the flow of the story.. Trust me!!! It's a serious thought process and nothing to laugh about!!!!
I, for one, have been known in the past to choose a particular book because the concerned author was good looking...And I stand guilty for doing it even today......
Authors like John Grisham, Khaled Hosseini are such excellent storytellers and their good looks are just like the "cherry on the icing!!"...
And girls, you seriously can't deny this fact...
The recent addition to this club is Neil Gaiman - my favored author of the season !!!! You have to check out his pictures to believe me...He is NICE!!
And honestly, this was the only reason I choose this book. I had never heard of this guy before and I downloaded this book on a whim.
I was in for a shock when kindle shows me that this book "The American Gods" is of 10,000+ pages. I decided then and there that I am going to skip through half the story and finish it in record time and that too only for Gaiman's face...
Otherwise, me and read another big fat book after the Pamuk disaster...
 No Way!!!
The reality was way different from what I had presumed... I enjoyed this book so much that I did not want it to finish...Instead of hurrying through the story I was taking it real slow, savoring its unique storyline but alas it all got over real fast!!!
Now that I have piqued your interest, let me tell you about its story....
Tell me something... Whether we are overly religious or not, we always carry our faith, our Gods with us to distant lands,  right... We carry them with us across the seas and oceans to protect us, to guide us in a new strange land with strange customs amongst total strangers... With the passage of time, we become familiar and comfortable in the new land, till we start treating it like our own and eventually become one with those strangers and their customs, even accepting the new Gods...Now, what happens to the Old Gods who had come with us, with our ancestors in this faraway land??? Do they continue living here, long forgotten by us or do they go back to their origin or do they perish in this new land uncared and unloved?
This is the premise of Neil Gaiman's book The American Gods...It is a story about Gods and their survival...Are they as human as we are??? Do they too need love, dedication, care, and faith?? Or are they above it all??
It is a story of trust, betrayal, cunningness, love, faith and most importantly of a person who is good and has a pure heart...
Here in Gaiman's world, you have old Gods and new Gods. The old Gods are long forgotten by their believers and are living an almost non-existent life at the periphery. Some of them have accepted this cruel twist of time whereas there are some who are not willing to fade away without a good fight. Standing facing the old regime are the new Gods...Gods of plastic money and bank and real estate and the media who are riding the high wave!! As is the rule of nature there is a big gap between the 'have nots' and the 'haves' which leads to discontent and the beginning of the war: War of Gods!!
I am in love with Gaiman's imagination and am more than game to read his other books just to see how far he stretches the imagination of his readers!!!!