Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

I have to say that I enjoyed this book much more than The Magicians from last week.

While it was a bit confusing in the beginning, what with the seemingly random anansi stories and random character backgrounds, you learn later that it all has a point.

I see this book as a supernatural-godlike-people-meets-Mary-Higgins-Clark type of book. And I love some of her books, so once I understood that everyone mentioned for more than a paragraph had a significant, but hidden, part in the plot I really got into it.

The parts when Fat Charlie comepairs his fiance’s mother to a vampire where so funny at points that I would start laughing out loud. Of course this caused the rest of my hall mates to ask if I was alright since to them I suddenly crack up while working on some sculpture homework. (I was listening to the audiobook since I had no time for reading this week.) They would also question me when I would start saying random words under my breath. In this case I would be repeating some of the lines or words from the audiobook since it is both written and spoken in British English. This makes it very difficult not to make a sound when you hear one of the characters repeating the word ‘bullocks’ over and over again.

Spider was my favorite character. Sure he’s a jerk for a while, a huge arrogant jerk, but if tell me you don’t feel sorry for him when he’s with the bird woman then I say you aren’t human.

Alright, now let’s look at it as a book. The chapters are long. Even on audiobook I could tell that they were long. There were 14 chapters and 10 hours of book, and I know that the edition in our library is about 400 pages.

I liked that they had a concluding chapter, where you learn everyone’s ending and don’t get left to make up your own story. Let’s compair it to Harry Potter. At the end on the seventh book of the Harry Potter series you get Harry going to look for a place to sleep then a 19 year jump to when all other their kids go to school. This led to hundreds of different fan-created stories to try to explain how everything went back together after having been shattered with the final battle. In Anansi Boys you get and explanation for everyone as well as an epilogue for Charlie and his new family. This I feel is better because I know that most of the true Harry Potter fans are still very annoyed that there is no explanation.

So there is Anansi Boys. I defiantly recommend it if you are looking for a good book.