American Gods

First and foremost, Neil Gaiman has been one of my favorite authors since I first picked up Good Omens back when I was a wee little sophomore in high school.  There was this really old book store in Savannah that had some really interesting titles and for some reason that was the book that called out to me.  Then I started reading it and I couldn't put it down.  I was laughing after almost every other page, attempting to also explain to the rest of my family at dinner just what made it funny.  Granted, Terry Pratchett put his fair share of his humor in that particular work but that doesn't take away from the brilliance that was the concept behind the story.  When you read more of Neil Gaiman's work it is much easier to see what he had contributed to Good Omens that made it the brilliant novel that it is.  Most, of course, is his extraordinary knowledge of mythology from all over the world.  However, there is knowledge and then there is what you do with that knowledge which leads to what I believe puts Gaiman above most authors.

You see, it is easy enough to use old stories of mythology and especially when those stories are often told and popular.  We could all retell some variation of the Hercules story or the Merlin story or the Pandora's box story because they have been circulated so much in our childhood via movies or the American education system.  Now, we see books like the Lightning Thief where the author assumes that we haven't had these stories already shoved down our throats and retells it as if it's their own.  This includes a few twists like "oh it's the Greek gods' children" but it's still the same basis.  It's a retelling of a classic story passed down through ages.  What Neil Gaiman does with mythological tales is that repurposes them.  A fine line exists between the two but they are different all the same.

Retelling the story is just as it sounds, nothing really changes other than maybe the location and a variation of the initial tasks that main characters were once given.  The same characters are there and they interact with the same people and basically stay within their own story.  Repurposing a story is taking the guts of it (such as the morals and the character development) and mixing it in with a completely new situation that normally would have never happened.  Most of Neil Gaiman's characters aren't just from one culture which in the end influences a specific character's design. The most amazing aspect of that happens when the different character's interact since it brings out their character flaws which is result of the myth's culture.  American Gods which is in relation to Anansi Boys is one of the best examples of this since you have everything from African to Irish lore figures that exist in the same plane because of America being the "melting pot".  In this world, it's plausible to have a leprechaun and Anubis to breathe the same air.  That is genius and to that sir I commend you.