American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is just incredible. The first novel I've read by him was Neverwhere and I thought it was an amazing work of high imagination, well-written, and incredibly fun. Next, I read Stardust, which is chronologically older than Neverwhere, and while I really enjoyed it, it became clear to me that Gaiman has been evolving, improving as a novelist. I could see that Neverwhere's writing was much more cohesive and effective than Stardust's (which is still a beautiful book). Then I read Good Omens, which I don't know how to place in Gaiman's evolution because it was co-authored by Terry Pratchett.

Then came American Gods... Up to that point, Gaiman had not written any novel which was as enjoyable, as complex, as well-researched, as beautiful as this. American Gods uses ideas that Gaiman started to explore in the Sandman comics and takes them all the way to the end of the road. Basically the book hinges on the premise that gods are the creation of human belief and worship; we give them physical existence and supernatural power through the workings of our minds, through the rituals and sacrificial offerings we make in their names.

The main character is this guy called Shadow, an ex-con (though a prototypical nice guy), who meets up with a strange man on the very day he comes out of prison. There's more to this "strange" man called Wednesday than meets the eye (the single eye he has). Wednesday and Shadow then embark on a road trip not only across the vast geographic expanse that is America, but also on the variegated mythological space created by the faiths of its many immigrant groups from around the globe. You're shown how old gods and new gods coexist in this space, living under the tension of a gig that may be about to end for some and just beginning for others. Quite possibly, this book will stand as Gaiman's masterpiece, or at least as my favourite volume from his collection.

The Stranger, by Albert Camus

Great, great, great. And deeply disturbing, as well. The idea that drives the story shocked me into thinking that life can't be lived like that, that there's a lot more to it which makes every experience worth enjoying and cherishing. The main character slowly develops this attitude that nothing in life really matters because our death, our finality, beckons to us from the moment of our extinction. Like a black wind that blows from our future to our present annihilating everything in its path. By the way, I'm nearly paraphrasing Camus when I say that. I don't have enough good words about this book. It takes only a few hours to read it, but afterwards you could easily find yourself spending several days reflecting about existence.

The Books of Magic, by Neil Gaiman

The artwork in these is just something else. Each of the four volumes is done by a different graphical artist and while styles vary a bit, the results are great. The story is somewhat similar to Harry Potter in that one fine day a young kid is visited by weird people to tell him he is a powerful wizard. That's where similarities end, however. The four visitors take the kid into an exploration of different aspects of the magical universe so he can later decide whether he wants in or out. Great, great story.

Dream Country (Sandman vol.3), by Neil Gaiman

Not nearly as good as the first volume, but still great fun to read. This is a collection of four self-contained plot lines delving deeper into the universe of The Endless, in which Dream is only one of the players. The first story, "Calliope", about a writer who holds a muse captive to his own uses, was my favourite. Perhaps my second favourite was "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in which we're told how Dream had a hand in Shakespeare's creation.

The Doll's House (Sandman vol.2), by Neil Gaiman

Really fantastic collection of stories. Most of them fit together, except for maybe a couple, which in any case are great on their own.

Preludes and Nocturns (Sandman vol.1), by Neil Gaiman

The introduction to The Sandman universe according to Neil Gaiman. It's a single great plotline about how Dream is imprisoned by an evil warlock who was trying to catch Death, but got her brother instead. The artwork on the covers is absolutely brilliant; it's a shame not all the graphic novel is like that. Then again, very few graphic novels use lavish and elaborate art work all the way through and what ultimately matters is the content, which in this case leaves nothing to be desired. Read this and you run the risk of getting hooked on the series. I did.

Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer

There's nothing like a good sci-fi book to get your mind racing. When I first spotted this one in a bookstore, I asked myself if it was going to be good. Reading the back cover and all the accolades this author has received (a Nebula award for The Terminal Man plus several other Nebula and Hugo nominations), I thought it was worth a try. Now that I've finished it, I can say it was definitely worth reading. It's well written, extremely stimulating, interesting for the scientific and theological speculations and rewarding in terms of entertainment value as well.

The book starts out with a humorous tone and after the first few pages you begin to wonder if it's going to be all tongue-in-cheek. It is not. It's pretty much hard sci-fi and delightful at that.

Calculating God is not about a bunch of people doing theological math, whatever that may be. It's about the possibility of existence of a super-being that laid out rules for the universe to set it in motion and interferes with it only sporadically. The story begins with the arrival of aliens on Earth. One of them shows up at the Royal Ontario Museum and says to the security guard at the entrance: "Take me to your paleontologist."

What follows is the development of a tight relationship between this alien entity and the paleontologist, who's a terminal case of lung cancer. Their experience together takes you on a exciting trip through the fields of theology, cosmology, paleontology, exobiology and several other ologies. There's a lot of science in this sci-fi and, in part, that's what makes it so good. More than just focusing on fact and speculation, however, the author does a great job constructing plausible characters full of humanity, something that any of us can understand, and that serves to anchor the story in the realm of the believable.

In spite of quite a bit of "tooting the author's horn" in the back cover and the bio on the last page, the book comes through with its promise and indicates that Robert J. Sawyer may be one of the best candidates to carry the torch of those sacred monsters like Isaac Asimov.