Read American Gods last year. Thought it was very inconsistent. Some good stuff, I liked the bits with Odin and Loki, and the other remnants of fallen gods. But there was a lot of other stuff that seemed really pointless (said taxi driver scene, among others).
Dave mentioned once that this story grew out of a treatment Gaiman was working on for relaunching Thor at Marvel. Would've been interesting to see that.
I've noticed in Gaiman's writing that he either cannot or will not do action scenes. This worked to his favor in Sandman, which is a fairly slow paced and methodical series, but works against him in other places (1602 and the end of AG). Perhaps he thinks he'll lose his audience if he condescends to that. Or maybe he just can't do it.
