I’ve read a couple of Neil Gaiman works before. I loved Ocean and the End of the Lane and had mostly good feelings about Neverwhere and that book, and its protagonist Richard Mayhew, has grown on me over time. (In fact, I suggest reading my friend Ale’s review from this year to get a better take on the book without the depression funk I was in in 2013). Late last year I saw badkittyuno’s review of American Gods and decided that it would be my Gaiman read for the new year. As a bonus, she had listened to the tenth anniversary edition full cast audiobook and raved about it. I wanted to expand my bookish horizons into the land of audiobook (I’d had some rough starts up to this point with the genre) and decided that this would be a great plan.
With those decisions made I got myself a copy on Audible and set about going on a road trip with Shadow on my way to and from work in January. It took over three weeks to listen to this story, because Gaiman’s preferred text which makes up the tenth anniversary edition, is 12,000 words longer than the original and is over 600 pages in print. In audio form it was 19 and a half hours long. Initially I thought, “Oh god, I’ve made a terrible mistake” and then I listened to the sultry tones of Neil Gaiman’s introduction and thought “I think this may work out just fine.”