American Gods: Gods in disguise

American Gods is littered with deities from various pantheons. While we're given the "real" names of some gods right away, others are only hinted at/revealed later. Which gods did you recognize right away? Which ones surprised you with their true identities later?

I certainly had a different idea of who Wednesday was . . . (not Odin).

I had to look up a few. Like the Russian ones, I'd never heard of those before. It seems that Neil Gaiman actually made up an extra sister...

Apparently there might have been a third Zorya, but she didn't have a name until American Gods? Seem to remember reading that somewhere. Zorya U. is the Morning Star, Zorya V. the Evening Star, and Zorya P. was the addition.

ETA: I picked up on Odin right away, but, oddly enough, didn't catch Loki/Low Key until much later. Definitely felt pretty dense when I finally sorted that one out.

>4 lorannen: I was the same way with Loki and Odin when I first read the book over decade ago. When I was a kid I spent a couple years very interested in mythology, so I knew Wednesday was Odin's day, and it wasn't much of a jump to see that Wednesday was Odin. I just wasn't expecting Shadow's cellmate to be a god, so Low Key being Loki surprised me. If I'd first read the book now, with all the movies that have Loki in them being popular, I might have picked it up sooner, I don't know.

I hit myself on the head when Low Key was revealed by the Hummer. I hadn't tumbled to that and I had been looking for him all the way through knowing how the whole Odin/Loki mythology went. Grrr.

Yes, Odin was easy to tumble to, and I know all about the Easter/Ishtar thing and the Egyptian mythology. But I know nothing of the Russian or Eastern European gods. Recognized many of the others at the gathering in a vague way.

I never did figure out who the god is that no one remembers his name. Has to do with money and such. I haven't gone searching though.

In case others haven't found this list/description of the Gods:

http://www.frowl.org/gods/gods.html

I know less about "mythological" Gods than about Christian mythology/symbolism . . . so I saw lots of God/Jesus in the Wednesday/Shadow relationship and descriptions . . .

Reading through the list of Gods on the frowl website, I'm now realizing why Nordic/Slavic Gods are appropriate to a book set in the Midwest . . . I'm a transplant to the Midwest, so didn't grow up with these stories . . . I'm more familiar with the Greek/Roman versions, so now that I see the translations/comparisons/parallels some of them make more sense to me.

I recognized Wednesday as Odin as soon as it was mentioned that he only had one eye he could see with.

Yeah, I didn't catch the punning on the names until so late! Too late to be examining each name as it appeared, at any rate. One of the fun things about the book!

I didn't play the "which God is this?" game at all. I recognized early on that it was one way to read the book, but I was more interested in what the God/Human interactions were saying about humans and their beliefs. (And to me, the "Gods play games with human lives" story is so old and well-worn as to be boring . . . there's not much difference in the game no matter who the gods are . . .) And frankly, I didn't want to interrupt my reading to go look things up . . .

>7 LucindaLibri: so I saw lots of God/Jesus in the Wednesday/Shadow relationship and descriptions . . .

For as far as I saw that, I figured it just meant that there are lots of similarities between all religions. One of the main things I noticed was the spear thing related to hanging on the tree. Shadow himself is pierced by a spear and I think I remember something about Odin himself also being speared? Now I wonder if that is a part of Odin legends or if some Christian themes were introduced here by Gaiman (Jesus was also speared in the side). Does anyone know? I tried to google a bit, but I couldn't find any mention of people hanging from the world tree being speared.

I know practically nothing of gods and mythology, this could be one of the main reasons I can't say I liked the book. The other reason would be that it wrapped up very conveniently and unconvincingly for me .

I got some of the gods connections right away - like Mr. Wednesday/Odin. It took me much longer to think of Shadow as Baldar. Like somebody above I did not catch the Low-key connection until later as well.

Strangely, I got the Zorya right off. The reason - I read William Vollman's Europe Central (one of the worst books to ever win the National Book Award - IMO) and Zorya has a role in that book. I was puzzled and looked it up at that time. Therefore, when she appeared in this book I knew who she was and then could guess about Chernabog. I was also familiar with the concept of Ragnorak and the destruction of Valhalla so the ending did not come as a surprise to me.

#12
I found these connections as well and at the time wondered if perhaps I was so into the book that I was reading too much into it? Now, I am not so sure. Perhaps those connections are there?

>7 LucindaLibri: Oh how I wish I had know about this list when I read the book a while back. I am not very familiar with mythology and I even commented in my review that an index of the gods would have been helpful.

I didn't know anything about Anansi. I kept thinking there were entertaining things about his character that I might be missing out on, but like LucindaLibri, I didn't want to interrupt myself to go looking something up.

I grew up reading stories about Anansi, so I got him right away.
I got the Egyptian gods too (I was obsessed with Ancient Egypt as a kid).