I have recently read the Chinese version of "American Gods" published by the Beijing Union
Press. This novel was written by British writer Neil Gaiman, who has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals.
He is so popular that his works had been translated into several languages and welcomed by readers all over the world.
In my view, "American Gods" can not be classified because the book is full of myths, roads, science fiction, reasoning, and other elements, so elusive that I couldn't touch the pace at first, just only stumblingly following the author.
The story begins with a prisoner who is about to be released from prison in his jail for three years. He is eager to go back home, reunite with his wife, and work daily for ordinary people's life.
But all dreams are broken overnight; he met Wednesday, as well as other Gods. When the Old Gods can not get people's beliefs, they had to survive in various ways, at the same time, people start to believe in the New Gods and support them, the war between the old and new is imminent. This novel mixes too many elements, which are regarded as taboo during the writing, but Neil was able to write this story successfully. Other elements can not cover up the glory of the main line - gods and mythological creatures exist for the reason that people believe in them. Immigrants to the United States brought with them spirits and Gods. The power of these mythological beings has diminished as people's beliefs waned. New Gods had arisen, reflecting the American's obsession with media, celebrity, technology, and drugs, among other things. Neil Gaiman is a successful fantasy novelist, he depicts the mysterious, magical, and amazing world of Gods. Humans and Gods are intertwined in this world, there are good and evil, love and hate, grandeur and mediocrity. In this world, they struggled for survival and longed to return to their own paradise, but they had to find that all in vain, eventually falling into hell.
This novel reveals the fact that God is derived from man's thoughts and God is created by man, so all the human's shortcomings can be found in God: jealousy, vanity, cruelty, soreness, and prejudice. We have known these through other fairy tales, but no one compares them with "American Gods, which shows thoroughly and mercilessly. God is the existence of...
