wow. I myself found Shadow to be terribly apathetic, passive, and with no personality, I couldn't feel any empathy towards him at all, and found the rest of the characters to be plain and cliched.
I liked the concept, the plot, and especially the short stories (wututu and salim's by themselves make the book worth it) but i don't like the way Gaiman writes, really. I think the story would've been better developed under any other writer.

But this is just me. Everyone else seems to love it, I heard a thousand and good reviews that made me read it in the first place.