Book itself: 3.5 stars // Audiobook: 5 stars 
 Gods, having been brought to America through the faiths of various settlers, live as shadows of their former glory. They vie for some kind of belief or recognition from modern Americans - but they're up against the New Gods of Media and the Internet, who covet this belief for themselves. A stolid ex-convict named Shadow is drawn into their affairs. 
 The gods (and various other legendary creatures) have adapted to the modern world in intriguing, imaginative ways - Thoth and Anubis, for example, run a funeral parlor in the South, but Horus has forgotten that he is more than a hawk. I enjoyed the ruminations on belief, imagination, materialism, hope, and so forth. My favorite parts were the "Coming to America" interludes, narrated by Gaiman himself: short pieces of historical fiction telling how a god/creature accompanied newcomers in their diverse journeys from their homelands to America, often influencing later life events. I happily would have read a full book of these interludes all by themselves! 
 While I appreciated the homage to my diverse, sprawling country - road tripping in the Midwest, interspersed with visits via airplane to cities elsewhere - I felt that the novel dragged terribly in the middle. The middle third of the book felt aimless - like I was being made to revel in local scenery, attitudes, and cuisines while the plot sat in one place and twiddled its thumbs. I'm not against long books, but this one in particular felt like an overgrown plant that needed pruning. (That's probably my own fault for picking the version calling itself "expanded with the author's preferred text"!) 
 Thankfully, the book picks up towards the end, and the resolution is... satisfying enough. (view spoiler)[At first, I was puzzled by the complete absence of Abrahamic deities from the story - but an All-father deity having his son hang on a tree, pass through death, then be raised again by the goddess Easter seemed like a firm enough nod to Christianity's pagan influences. (I listened to the excerpt involving Jesus that didn't make it into the book. It seems that editing it out was a good choice - the passage was surprisingly trite.) (hide spoiler)] 
 Given the meandering plot, I'm sure I would have abandoned this book if I had been reading it in paperback form - but the audiobook is incredibly well-done! It's narrated by an ensemble cast, complete with regional accents and appropriate vocal timbres. At 20 hours of listening time, American Gods would be a perfect accompaniment to a cross-country road trip.