Writer: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Voyager (as part of Legends II, an anthology edited by Robert Silverberg)
The Story:
Neil Gaiman revisits the world of American Gods with an all-new novella! After his role in the war between old gods and new, Shadow has decided to take an extended vacation. After wandering about Scandinavia, he winds up in a Scottish village without castles or ruins, but a great environment for walks. In the hotel bar, he meets a man who speaks of monsters, and offers Shadow a lucrative job for the weekend, minding the door at an exclusive gala at an old castle on the hill. Not learning from experience, Shadow takes the job, placing him in the middle of an ancient struggle between man and monster. As the distinction between the two blurs, Shadow’s only hope for survival may rest with a mysterious woman of the land. If Shadow can defeat the forces working against him, he may be able to free long-lost gods from torment and one day return home–but what will his victory mean to his beautiful benefactor?
The Reaction:
While so many of Neil Gaiman’s characters wear their hearts on their sleeves or speak in beautiful and profound pronouncements and witticisms, Shadow has always been great in that he hardly says anything and still conveys everything you might want to know. What’s better, in American Gods and now “Monarch of the Glen,” Gaiman matches Shadow’s reserved mood in the descriptive passages, as well, with short sharp sentences inching the reader into the world of the story. There’s a very clean, systematic kind of mystery at play in these works, as the descriptions and details that are left unsaid become the meat of these characters’ lives. At the end, when the good guys are revealed and the bad guys defeated, there is still a good deal of beauty and intrigue; the characters, brought to life, live on outside the story, filling the gaps with infinite possibility.
As to the story itself, Gaiman makes excellent use of both well-known and obscure folklore, applying the history of the region to the theological system established in American Gods. We’ve got Norse gods, creatures of the woods, and a fantastic cameo by the enigmatic Wednesday. Also, the repeated references to Shadow dying on the tree and reviving, a very strong Christ metaphor, serve to question the nature of humanity and mortality, and play both sides of the argument of whether Shadow is man or monster.
That said, Shadow’s behavior seems a bit odd in places, given his background. The set-up to “Monarch of the Glen” is a bit odd in that it so closely resembles Shadow’s interaction with Wednesday in the main book: a strange man approaches him, offers him a job which right from the start Shadow knows will not be what it seems. Yet he accepts. This is addressed, however, once Shadow gets to the mansion and, convinced now that he’s been duped, announces aloud to himself, “I’ll stay.” He may be a drifter, and easily led, but Shadow’s a man who knows what he wants.
The Verdict:
With all the hype around the Sandman: Endless Nights preview, this little prose piece might be overlooked. Particularly since, at present, it’s only published in the U.K. This is what Amazon UK is for, folks–yes, they ship to the States for not too bad of a price, and if you sign in with your American account they will approximate the cost in dollars. Still, it’s tough to say whether a forty-page American Gods novella is worth the price of a rather large anthology; for a regular reader of the fantasy genre who might also enjoy new works by George R.R. Martin, Orson Scott Card, and Terry Brooks, the scales tip heavily in favor of “yes.” For that goodly lot who might never have read or consider reading Discworld or Hedge Knight, the answer may be closer to something like, “…but, it’s new Neil Gaiman.” So, yes.
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