Sort of like American Gods, but more manageable in scale. I enjoyed both books, but readers turned off by the sprawling narrative of AG might enjoy this one better.

This is an incredible novel of fantasy that I strongly recommend for all. 10 of 10 stars

Entertaining as usual

I've read many books by this author and I haven't been disappointed as yet. In this work he tells the story of a young man who is not very confident and is only half a man. His dad is not the easiest person to know and not be embarrassed by and over the years they are estranged. The story becomes a madcap romp and hilarious enjoyable read. Of course I highly recommend.

Read for Booktuber Picks my TBR Vlog with Liene's Library: https://youtu.be/C-4VnEhxCOY

Anansi Boys is an interesting book. It's something of a companion to American Gods, but with a very different narrative structure. It follows the sons of Mr. Nancy, one of whom leads a humdrum life in the UK, one of whom is a party boy. I mostly enjoyed this, although I didn't love the plot points involving the party boy seducing and having an affair with his brother's fiance. I'm not a big fan of infidelity in books, even if Gaiman sort of works it out by the end.

This is a cool take on African mythology and the characters are very well developed. The author's note mentions that Nalo Hopkinson consulted on the Carribean dialogue, which I think shows in the finished product. The audio narration is fantastic!

I had this 1st edition hardcover novel lying about for some time and only after recently building some new bookshelves I discovered books I had bought but forgotten about.
Having read this book, which was not a strain at all because Gaimans prose makes you have a fairly easy read, I found that my giving this novel to my youngest daughter in Dutch something I should have waited with. She loved the story about star who fell to earth but was clearly to young for a tale this complex. Meaning that this Gaiman novel clearly is not meant for the younger fantasy reader, you need some more personal development to really appreciate this novel.

I loved the idea of the young man finding out that he was actually a son of a God, his discovery of his split personality and the soapy aspects of the tale about a family rediscovering each other. Gaimans immorality tale is beautifully told and is funny as well. What I liked best was the writers love for all his characters even if they were less that good.

Now I have to find American Gods in a decent copy, just because this one made reading fun.

Fat Charlie (his dad gave him the nickname (it's a sore spot)) spent his entire life absolutely mortified by his dad.

n  

Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment

n
Then his dad does the unthinkable - he had the nerve to die. Now Fat Charlie has to go back to America for the first time in years and midway through the funeral - he discovers something wholly unexpected and almost equally embarrassing - his dad was a God.

n  Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.n

We follow Fat Charlie (Anansi's son) as he becomes immersed into the world of the Gods - from discovering primitive magic to his secret brother. His life is thrown into chaos - his fiancee leaves him, his brother swoops her up and Fat Charlie is set up to take the fall for a very terrible person. All the while, he has to deal with the fallout from his dad's embarrassing death.

While this book takes place in the same world as American Gods - there is hardly any overlap. This could be read this one as a standalone. I was disappointed that my favorite characters (Shadow and the new gods) don't make an appearance. The plot progressed at a glacial pace but once it started ramping up, I was hooked - there were so many side plots that were masterfully interwoven.

I did enjoy that Fat Charlie had more personality that Shadow (from the first novel) but I still preferred Shadow. Much of the charm and magical realism from the first book didn't have as much of an impact as it did before - perhaps because of the limited characters. My absolute fave character? Fat Charlie's fiance's mother - she was such a bitter, shriveled prune (I loved it!).

The Finer Books Reading Challenge - 2018 Reading Challenge: A book that switches perspectives

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Fat Charlie's father dies while singing karioke. Soon afterward, Charlie meets Spider, his previously unknown brother. Spider proceeds to wreck Charlie's life in humorous ways. Did I mention Charlie's dad was Anansi, the spider god? You'd think I would have mentioned that first.

My interest in Neil Gaiman led me to discover Wodehouse and this book really show's Wodehouse's influence on Gaiman. Fat Charlie and Spider's relationship is straight out of a Wodehouse book. It's not hard to imagine Fat Charlie or Spider hanging out at the Drone's club.

I had no idea what to expect from Anansi Boys going in, other than that it was a fictional tale from the great Neil Gaiman. I didn't recognize the name of the spider god/trickster of West African and Caribbean storytelling, nor did I realize the connection to American Gods (which I haven't read: a mistake I plan to remedy), so this was a fun, folkloric learning experience couched in a clever tale about the sons of Anansi as they learn about each other, their father, their relative powers, and eventually meet somewhere in the middle. It is a very satisfying blend of contemporary life and mythic storytelling, with elements of comedy, mystery, caper, police drama, and magic. Lenny Henry provides a masterful, many-voiced performance in the audio book version, which I highly recommend.

Fat Charlie was dubbed so by his dad when just a chubby child. Unfortunately even though he shed the pounds the name stuck. Many years later Fat Charlie is living an unremarkable life, with a crappy job and a girlfriend who insists on making him "wait until marriage". When Charlie's dad dies he learns some amazingly unbelievable things and his boring life is forever changed.

This one has a lot of wit and was just offbeat enough to hold my attention. Charlie is an every-guy sort of character who is easy to like as he bumbles his way through some very odd changes in his life. The book is populated with interesting people and takes a lot of twists and turns that aren't expected. Gaiman wrote it and it reads like a twisted fairy-tale so how can you go wrong with that?

Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.

4.5/5 stars
First of all, I want to be honest that I’d never heard of Anansi or any Anansi story before I read American Gods even though it is said that Probably there’s no one in the whole wide world doesn’t know some Anansi stories. Well, I didn’t and in case you too haven’t heard of Anansi before, he’s a West African folklore character. The spirit of all stories and knowledge. Sometimes he’s a spider, sometimes he is a man and sometimes the combination of both. He’s tricky and cunning more or less like the Loki the Norse god in my opinion but he’s not evil. He just love to laugh.

He is greedy, of course, and lustful, and tricky, and full of lies. And he is good-hearted, and lucky, and sometimes even honest. Sometimes he is good, sometimes he is bad. He is never evil. Mostly, you are on Anansi’s side. This is because Anansi owns all the stories.

But this book is not about Anansi but his son, Charlie. Charlie, often called ‘Fat Charlie’ dislikes his father who always play tricks on him and manages to embarrass him in any occasions. Even his stupid nickname was his father’s fault. When his father dies (in a very embarrassing way and Charlie manages to embarrass himself during the funeral), Charlie finds out from the old lady who lived next door that he actually has a brother he doesn’t know about, Spider (it’s his actual name, not that he’s a spider). Spider is very different from Charlie. He’s so easygoing and most importantly, he inherits some of their father’s godly powers. Charlie contacts him via a spider without actually meaning to and he comes to Charlie’s life, making a mess of it by only trying to help and annoys Charlie so much that he seeks help to get rid of him. Unfortunately, the only one who hear and agrees to help is a spirit, an old foe of Anansi who wants to destroy Anansi line.

I don’t know if I agree this book to be American Gods 2. It doesn’t seem to have any relevance with the first book except for one character, Anansi, who mostly dead in this book. And anyway the Anansi in American Gods was not as wacky as the Anansi here. I love the wacky Anansi better. Yes, he sometimes does cruel tricks but he’s still funny. The plot and characters are fresher too and more focused on African folklore. I really love how all the stories, the tricks, the lies, the murders, the ghosts and the beasts connected at the end and makes a great end. And I love the character development of Charlie to be more confident and of Spider to be more humble but still be themselves until the end. I’d give 5 stars if it didn’t take me a while to really get into it but otherwise, this book is wonderful as a story of the one who owns all stories and it have good quotes too.

People respond to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories spread, and as people tell them, the stories change the tellers. Because now the folk who never had any thought in their head but how to run from lions and keep far enough away from rivers that the crocodiles don’t get an easy meal, now they’re starting to dream about a whole new place to live. The world may be the same, but the wallpaper’s changed.

Magic. A special kind of magic, the dark delicious sly kind of magic, where magic things come from places you won't expect, like old ladies' mutterings and crumpled feathers, where spiders are men and men are spiders and the old gods are animals and fight for the stories, and where Fat Charlie has stepped into it all simply because he got a little drunk, because his fiancé was late for dinner. Lesson: drink to see magic. Actually, no, it started earlier than that, but I won't tell you. This book is very funny in places, but it won't make you laugh, it will make you giggle forever. And the best part about it is, you never know what happens next.

ΟΙ ΓΙΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΑΧΝΗΣ"

ΑΤΜΟΣΦΑΙΡΙΚΟΣ, ΜΕ ΠΗΓΑΙΟ ΤΟ ΤΑΛΕΝΤΟ ΦΑΝΤΑΣΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΟΥ. ΟΙ ΗΡΩΕΣ ΚΙΝΟΥΝΤΑΙ ΣΕ ΜΙΑ ΛΕΠΤΗ ΓΡΑΜΜΗ ΠΟΥ ΔΙΑΧΩΡΙΖΕΙ ΤΗΝ ΠΡΑΓΜΑΤΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΡΑΙΣΘΗΣΗ, ΤΟΝ ΡΕΑΛΙΣΜΟ ΑΠΟ ΤΟΝ ΥΠΕΡΡΕΑΛΙΣΜΟ. ΘΑ ΗΘΕΛΑ ΝΑ ΕΙΜΑΙ ΚΑΠΟΙΑ ΗΡΩΙΔΑ ΤΟΥ ΓΚΕΪΜΑΝ. ΝΑ ΝΙΩΣΩ ΤΗΝ ΑΓΩΝΙΑ, ΝΑ ΤΑΞΙΔΕΨΩ ΣΕ ΑΛΛΕΣ ΕΠΟΧΕΣ, ΣΕ ΜΑΓΙΚΑ ΤΟΠΙΑ, ΝΑ ΕΧΩ ΥΠΕΡΦΥΣΙΚΕΣ ΔΥΝΑΜΕΙΣ.

Η ΓΡΑΦΗ ΤΟΥ ΣΕ ΜΑΓΕΥΕΙ, ΣΕ ΧΑΛΑΡΩΝΕΙ. ΕΙΝΑΙ ΕΘΙΣΤΙΚΗ Κ ΣΥΝΑΜΑ ΠΕΡΙΕΡΓΗ. ΑΝΑΖΗΤΑΣ ΤΗ ΛΥΣΗ. ΜΠΟΡΕΙ ΤΑ ΓΕΓΟΝΟΤΑ ΝΑ ΜΗΝ ΞΕΦΕΥΓΟΥΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΑΠΛΗ ΛΟΓΙΚΗ, ΝΑ ΜΗΝ ΞΕΠΕΡΝΟΥΝ ΤΑ ΟΡΙΑ ΦΑΝΤΑΣΙΑΣ, ΣΙΓΟΥΡΑ ΟΜΩΣ ΕΝΤΥΠΩΝΟΝΤΑΙ ΣΤΟ ΜΥΑΛΟ ΤΟΥ ΑΝΑΓΝΩΣΤΗ.

ΘΕΩΡΩ ΠΩΣ Ο ΓΚΈΪΜΑΝ ΗΡΘΕ ΑΠΟ ΑΛΛΟ ΣΥΜΠΑΝ ΜΕ ΣΚΟΠΟ ΝΑ ΜΑΣ ΧΑΡΙΣΕΙ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΕΝΕΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΕΣ!