Fantasy / Urban Fantasy
The Gods Below State Street
Combining Neil Gaiman + Joe Abercrombie | American Gods + The Blade Itself
Synopsis
A disillusioned bartender in Chicago discovers the city's underground transit tunnels host an invisible war between forgotten immigrant gods. When a routine supernatural con goes wrong, she's dragged into a conspiracy older than the city itself.
Gaiman's matter-of-fact mythology and dark whimsy meet Abercrombie's gritty cynicism and morally grey ensemble. The hidden divine underworld of American Gods collides with The Blade Itself's political intrigue and darkly comic dialogue, set in a Chicago where forgotten immigrant gods wage an invisible war beneath the streets.
Behind the Story
A discussion between Neil Gaiman and Joe Abercrombie
The bar was real. That's the thing I want to establish before anything else, because the rest of this is going to get strange enough. It was a real bar on a real street in Chicago — or a version of Chicago that existed in the back of my mind, which is close enough. Wood surfaces the color of dark tea. Brass taps that had been polished so many times the lettering had worn to ghosts. A jukebox in the corner playing something by Patsy Cline that neither of them had selected. Gaiman was already…
Read the full discussionThe Formula
- Matter-of-fact narration that treats gods and magic as ordinary nuisances rather than wonders
- Dark whimsy in the juxtaposition of the sacred and the mundane — a god drinking cheap beer, divinity in a CTA tunnel
- Myth made accessible through grounding in specific American geography and immigrant experience
- Morally grey characters on every side — no faction is right, no one's hands are clean
- Gritty, visceral physical descriptions and darkly funny dialogue that undercuts sentiment
- Cynical protagonist who's seen too much and trusts too little, dragged into someone else's war
- A mundane protagonist pulled into a hidden conflict between old gods surviving in modern America
- The idea that gods are sustained by belief and die when forgotten — worship as economy
- Contemporary America as a graveyard of imported deities, each clinging to relevance
- An ensemble of morally compromised players where political intrigue masks deeper darkness
- Darkly funny dialogue that reveals character through what people won't say directly
- A protagonist who thinks she's a bystander but discovers she's been a piece on the board all along
Reader Reviews
What this story understands about diasporic mythology is that the gods don't just travel -- they thin. They become habits. Yevgeny's one old woman in Wicker Park who lights candles because her mother taught her is a detail that hit me personally. My grandmother does the same. The freight tunnels as a space where these forgotten deities coexist and compete is a genuinely smart structural metaphor for immigrant Chicago. The Gaiman influence is clear in making all of this feel ordinary rather than wondrous, but Abercrombie's moral greyness complicates it beautifully -- Bridget isn't wrong that the system works, she's just wrong about what that justifies.
56 found this helpful
Oh, this is lovely. The opening line alone -- 'The thing about gods is that they tip like shit' -- is doing so much work, setting up the whole tonal register in nine words. Gaiman's fingerprints are everywhere in the matter-of-fact mythology, but the Abercrombie cynicism keeps it from getting precious. Yevgeny explaining divinity like plumbing is perfect dark whimsy. And Rae's choice at the end genuinely moved me. Keeping the knowing because it's hers, even though it costs her -- that's the kind of earned sentiment that only lands when the rest of the story hasn't been sentimental at all.
47 found this helpful
The Gaiman elements are well-executed: the matter-of-fact divine, the immigrant gods fading with assimilation, the bartender-as-everywoman drawn into mythological conflict. The Abercrombie contribution is most visible in the dialogue and in the refusal to let any character occupy a morally clean position. The American Gods DNA is unmistakable, perhaps too much so -- the belief-as-currency conceit is handled competently but doesn't add to what Gaiman already explored. What saves the piece from being derivative is the ending. Rae's refusal isn't heroic defiance; it's stubborn ownership. That distinction matters, and the story earns it.
43 found this helpful
The atmosphere is excellent -- Chicago's freight tunnels as divine territory is an inspired choice, and the story earns its setting rather than merely using it as backdrop. The prose maintains a controlled, sardonic register throughout that serves the Gaiman-Abercrombie blend well. I particularly admired the passage about belief-as-plumbing and the tunnel descent where each god's territory has a distinct sensory signature. My reservation is pacing: the middle section where Bridget explains the con runs slightly long. The story is strongest in its opening and its climax. Still, the final choice -- keeping knowledge despite its cost -- is the right ending for this particular narrator.
38 found this helpful
Solid piece. The dialogue between Bridget and Yevgeny has real Abercrombie energy -- 'You are the worst co-conspirator I have ever worked with, Veles. And I have worked with Loki' made me laugh out loud. Rae's cynicism feels earned, not performed. But the plot is thin -- it's basically one reveal and one choice. For something invoking The Blade Itself, I wanted more political complexity, more factions playing angles. The south side gods and Tlaloc's people are mentioned but never shown. Still, the voice carries it.
31 found this helpful
Tlaloc's people are mentioned exactly once, as a geopolitical chess piece. The Mexican gods exist here only as a strategic threat to the European faction, never as characters with their own interiority or perspective. The story is aware of this -- the 'careful disrespect' in Bridget's phrasing is noted by the narrator -- but awareness is not the same as correction. Otherwise the prose is strong and the tunnel descent is genuinely atmospheric. The Norn humming in the alcove is a nice touch.
29 found this helpful
I'd hand this to a student who says they don't like fantasy. It reads fast, the voice is sharp and funny, and the gods feel real because they're pathetic in the way real people are pathetic. The Bridget-Yevgeny dynamic is great -- you can feel The Blade Itself's morally grey ensemble in how nobody's entirely trustworthy. Strong ending. The cat detail at the very end is the kind of thing that makes a story feel lived-in.
22 found this helpful
Good voice, thin worldbuilding. The belief-as-resource system never gets specific enough -- how much belief sustains a god? What happens at zero? The 'deep thing' has no rules at all. Atmospheric but structurally loose. Dialogue carries the piece.
8 found this helpful