American Gods is one of the earliest novels by Neil Gaiman which centered on a man called Shadow who was incarcerated in prison and counting days to get out but was released earlier because of the death of his wife, Laura. Not knowing what to do with his life without his wife and the lost of his potential job because of the incident, Shadow agreed to job proposal by a mysterious man called Mr Wednesday who was a con man himself but turn out to be an incarnation of Odin who came to America by immigrants but now like the old deities, had their powers diminished by the lost of modern Americans's belief in them. Under Wednesday's wing, Shadow saw that the new and old deities was in the verge of a war. The old gods disgruntled by their increasingly forgotten presence in favour of the new gods while the new gods feeling that the gods were old fashion and deserve to be forgotten or die. 
 However, I'm not sure whether the additional text (I read the 10th Anniversary edition) was necessary since surprising most of the book functioned as a filler around Shadow. Neil Gaiman had a tendency to form a narrative main character with barely enough backstory in them to make them interesting. His main white male characters often was a blank-slate character with an only function was as a vehicle for the audience to dive into the story. I see this in Richard Mayhew, Nobody, Tristran, the narrator in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. In fact there's some similarities between American Gods and Neverwhere which can be a spoiler if you focus too much on the characterization. 
 Since Shadow spent most part of the book, on the run from the trails of people who wished him dead or wanted him to play on their team, the book is a road trip with a lot similarities like CW's Supernatural. There's many also many subplot in this book which are unrelated to the rest of the book but good on their own. I love the story about the egyptian and slavic pantheon and wished for more of them. But to be honest, I couldn't care much about 60% of the book. Much of the wealth of this book came around the confrontation in the end and because Gaiman's tendency to spread bread crumbs of spoilers in his narrative, the rounding climax is quite predictable if you're used to Gaiman's style of writing. 
 It took me days to finish this audiobook but I probably will look forward to the HBO adaptations since much of Gaiman's strength is in his screenwriting. I'm not sure about how American was this book but I do enjoy the subtle mythologies.