DNF @ 57%. I simply hated every moment of this book.

Neil Gaiman is very hit-and-miss for me; The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere are two of my very favorite reads, but other books are mediocre or outright slogs. *shrug*

The tag line for this one is classic.

“God is dead. Meet the kids.”

An entertaining and strangely wonderful tale as only Neil Gaiman can tell it. For whatever reason (not that I’m questioning it) I really gel with Gaiman. I enjoy his prose and haven’t read anything from him that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. I have even listened to a few of his on audiobook, that he narrated himself and truly enjoyed those as well. Dude has talent.

Fat Charlie’s life is pretty ordinary. Boring you might say.

Until Spider, the brother he didn’t even know that he had, comes for a little visit and his entire world gets turned upside down.

There’s something to be said for ordinary.

ANANSI BOYS (hereinafter AB) is the archetype tale of the hero's quest but in place of the typical warrior hero is a fool, and, oh, it happens to take place in our days and there is the wonder of something magical yet not totally seen.

Our fool of a hero is Fat Charlie. He used to be chubby as a kid but now he's in good enough shape yet everyone remembers him as Fat Charlie so the name sticks, much to his chagrin, and, it's all the fault of his father.

Wait, did I tell you his father is a trickster African God?
That makes it even harder on Fat Charlie because he's not dealing just with a mortal father but a father who is an African God and who can usually persuade people to do almost anything and make them usually laugh over it. At one point, back in the day, when Fat Charlie was a kid, his father tricked him into dressing like President Taft on President's Day and told him everyone else would be dressed that way, too.

n  n

Well, they were not and Fat Charlie was belittled to tears by the other kids and his father thought it was all amusing.

Now, don't start thinking Fat Charlie's father is overly cruel because there are other stories that favor him doing kind things for his son.

Did I mention this father, known as Anansi, by the way, has two sons? Fat Charlie is the mortal one and this other son, known as Spider, is the one with all the powers.

After Anansi appears to bite it while singing karaoke (something Fat Charlie could never do) there's a big funeral and a series of steps in the story lead to the two brothers linking up for the first time.

Spider finally meets Fat Charlie, who lives in London but who grew up in Florida, and Spider decides he wants to live with Fat Charlie for a while.

But . . .

It turns out that Spider likes Fat Charlie's lifestyle so much that he steals his fiance and takes over his job while Fat Charlie goes off to talk to some witches (four old ladies living in a suburb) to have Spider banished. In doing so, he goes to another dimension where life first began and makes a deal with Bird Woman who has a grudge against Fat Charlie's family.

n  n

What then takes place is a situation where a mortal and his demigod brother are attacked from several different fronts by this immortal, godlike Bird Woman.

Oh, and Fat Charlie gets it for another girl but has to rescue his old fiance and her mother from another superpower in the Bahamas where he learns what it means to be a hero, even if he is truly the archetype fool.

Overall, a superb urban fantasy with overlapping themes of coming of age, Pandora's Box, the twists and turns of life and
how we all have family members we really want to get away from. Heh.

And, on a far deeper level, one could also say this is about being human, even around the face immortal Gods.

CHARACTERS/DIALOGUE: A minus; STORY/PLOTTING/EDITING: B to B plus; THEMES/LEGENDS: B; OVERALL GRADE: B plus.

Mr. Gaiman has the same problem as Terry Pratchet. He can present the material, but he can't make me care. It's not a good sign when you're halfway through a book and you realize that if you put down the book and walked away right then and there, and never found out how the book ended, you wouldn't care. I don't care whether things work out between him and Rosie. I don't care if his dad is still alive or not. I don't care if he and his brother ever make up. I wouldn't care if the author ended the book with 'then a bomb exploded and they all died the end'. I am unable to get interested in any of the characters or the plot. And the book was supposed to be funny, but most of the jokes just made it seem like he was trying way too hard. I've had this problem with all of Gaiman's books. I guess it just not my thing.

فوق العاده بود! هرچی بیشتر کتاب های نیل گیمن رو میخونم، بیشتر عاشق سبک نویسندگیش میشم. شخصیت پردازی عالی ای داشت. از یه ایده ی کوچیک یه داستان خیلی خوب در آورده بود. البته بگم که این کتاب اصلا به پای خدایان آمریکایی نمیرسه. و با این که داستان پسرهای یکی از شخصیت های خدایان آمریکاییه ولی اصلا نمیشه دنباله ی اون کتاب به حساب بیاد چون کاملا داستان جدایی داره و هیچ چیز مشترکی با اون کتاب نداره.
ولی آخه درست بود که داستان کتاب با مرگ شخصیت مورد علاقه ی من شروع بشه؟! :|
خب داستان با مرگ آقای نانسی (یا آنانسی) شروع میشه و چارلی که همیشه از دست کارای باباش جلوی بقیه خجالت زده میشه، میفهمه که یه برادر به اسم عنکبوت داشته و پدرش هم یه خدا بوده.
شخصیت عنکبوت به شدت اول داستان رو اعصابم بود!!! میخواستم خفش کنم!! ولی به ته کتاب که رسیدم واقعا دوسش داشتم.
و کلا خوندن این کتاب خیلی خوش گذشت! بعضی قسمت هاش واقعا خنده دار بود ولی من هیچوقت کتاب های نیل گیمن رو به کسی پیشنهاد نمیکنم چون فکر میکنم سبک نویسندگیش یجوریه که همه خوششون نمیاد و اگه با داستان ارتباط نگیری برات به شدت کسل کننده اس. خلاصه که خیلی این کتاب رو دوست داشتم و پایان خوبی هم داشت.

One of the few Gaiman books that I only gush mildly about, as opposed to gushing enthusiastically.

It's a solid book, and it does all the things that makes Gaiman's books great. It's got humor, myth, gravitas, cleverness.... But it simply didn't impress me as much as Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, or Coriline.

I'm willing to admit that the only reason I don't rank this book as 5 stars is because I'm comparing it to his other books, which are profound and perfect. That's probably unfair of me, but I never claimed to be completely fair.

I laughed out loud. While reading. In a Japanese rice bowl joint. Okay, so maybe it was more of a chortle, but it was definitely out loud. And more than just the once. Patrons quietly minding their own business while slogging through their Number Three Specials With Extra Tokyo Beef would be startled into wakefulness to see me - chopsticks in one hand, book in the other - as my grizzled maw broke forth with guffaws and irrepressible smiles.

Really, Anansi Boys may be the first thing I've read from Neil Gaiman that I liked. I never got into Sandman (though I'm told I should have persevered). I never finished American Gods (though I'm told I should have persevered). I never finished 1602 (despite guessing that I should have persevered).

Still, not only did I like it but I loved it. Enough that I gave my copy to someone else to read and purchased a second copy for another friend. And I'm certain they'll want to do similar things with the book.

Anansi Boys is at all times funny, adventurous, and charming. And several other over-used adjectives. In fact, Anansi Boys may be the prototype from which overused adjectives should have come - before they were overused. I'm not sure that Anansi Boys is great literature and I'm not sure that it isn't. What I am certain of beyond any shadow of doubtfulness is that Anansi Boys may be the most fun I have ever had reading a novel.

There may be others that I enjoyed more but my experience of this book was such that it pushed (if even momentarily) all other books from my mind. Someone on the back suggests that the book will make you love and be grateful for spiders. Critics and the things they say, huh? Well, I don't love spiders, but dang was this book good.

The end.

p.s. Anyone thinking of reading Blue like Jazz or Against Christianity or something by Karl Barth should definitely read this first. 'Cuz I mean what if you died after finishing the next book on your queue? It would be an all time tragedy to have wasted hours reading Donald Miller when there is something like Anansi Boys out there. Plus, it's just as spiritual.

While listed as "American Gods #2", this book is in no way a sequel to American Gods and can be enjoyed as a stand-alone.
This story does however take the idea of making deities human people that live lives in our modern world (like in AG) and tells the story of two young men in London - Charlie and Spider - the sons of Mr. Nancy, aka Anansi the Spider.
This book brings in references and stories from African stories about Anansi and builds a completely new story around them. This book is filled with that quintessentially Gaiman humor, and makes extraordinary things seem quite possible while ordinary things take on new unusual significance. It is a well told story filled with unexpected twists and is told with vivid imagery and wit. Much lighter and more fun that AG, but just as original.

A little disappointing after American Gods.

DNF @ 86%

I was really into the first half (maybe even 2/3) of this book. Somewhere after that point, interest went dowwwwwnhill. Like, majorly. I'm not even sure what's going on anymore. So... done! As I told Sarah and Shelly though, Gaiman seems to be very hit-or-miss for me, so I'm not worried.

সুন্দর! আমেরিকান গড-এ গেইম্যান যেন ক্যানভাসটা বেশ হিজিবিজি করে ফেলেছিলেন। এটা বরং বেশ গোছালো লাগলো।

Anansi Boys is loosely related to American Gods, but each book stands alone and tells an independent story. The main connection is that Anansi is one of the gods we meet in American Gods, often referred to as Mr. Nancy.

Anansi himself doesn’t really show up in Anansi Boys all that much, but he’s referred to a great deal and several stories are told about him. Our main character is Charlie, Anansi’s son, who is quite ordinary, shy, and easily intimidated. At the beginning of the book, we read about Charlie’s childhood and the things his father Anansi did to embarrass him. Before long, we catch up to Charlie as he’s living his adult life, which is quite an ordinary life. Then, of course, something happens, and Charlie’s life starts to get pretty strange and not very pleasant.

Charlie was a funny and interesting character. He starts off kind of spineless, and I was afraid he would get annoying, but he slowly started to get more assertive. The story was interesting. Between the blatant foreshadowing and the hints, I can’t say anything about the story was terribly surprising, but it held my interest. Toward the end, I thought some things happened that stretched the boundaries of credibility, even considering the subject matter. I was really enjoying the book up to a point, but I started feeling a little less enthusiastic by the end.

This had a very different tone than American Gods. I enjoyed both books, but for different reasons. By comparison, I thought American Gods was darker, meatier, and more serious. Anansi Boys was lighter, hilariously funny at times, and sometimes downright silly. I couldn’t really say which one I liked best. During the first half of this book, I would have said I liked Anansi Boys better. Now that I’ve finished it, I’m leaning toward American Gods.