Anansi Boys

The Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman, is quite an odd book.  I have enjoyed some of Gaiman's other work including Sandman, but I never really found much of an attachment to this one in particular.  I suppose this is the result of several different aspects.  I didn't hate the book by any means, but I certainly wouldn't read it again, as it's merely an alright book as far as I'm concerned.

The book is not without it's good points and charms, most characters in the story are pretty well fleshed out and believable to the point where the reader will have an opinion of that person's personality entirely based on Gaiman's development through words.  I, for instance, really hated Graham Coats, with a passion and that's exactly what the author intended.  Also, the story was pretty imaginative, as I've never read or watched anything I would really call that similar in most aspects.  Another enjoyable aspect of the story is that all of the characters seem to come from different aspects of the plot and then weave together in someway or another, and sometimes they exit and then happen to come back into the story at specific times making it pretty interesting to read.  The imaginary world, though there is hardly any of it in this book which I'll complain about in a bit, is pretty interesting.  My reasoning for not loving the book certainly doesn't stem from it being written poorly either.  Gaiman, is definitely at the top of his craft in terms of writing.  The story flows quite nicely and it's pretty easy to read with little confusion.  I like how the book is serious at times, but at the same time not so serious and has little humorous parts and odd character quirks that will make the reader laugh to themselves while they're reading.

There aren't really any glaring things that make the book an alright one rather than an excellent one but, overall there is a reasoning for it.  The story itself though interesting in how it connects the characters is pretty lacking other than that.  Gaiman's story isn't hardly as grand or fantastic as I was expecting, the reader is basically just following Fat Charlie from one odd event to another as he tries to get his life back to normal, which is pretty boring in my opinion.  The books world does seem pretty realistic most of the time which I realize is what Gaiman was going for, but the fantastical elements are way too mellowed down to where they don't even seem fantastic in comparison to the real world.  There were characters I liked in the story but the main protagonist, Fat Charlie, I thought was terrible.  He seemed really ignorant to everything in a dumb sort of way, and when something crazy happened around or to him, his reaction was almost as if it were normal, which it shouldn't be in comparison to his mundane office worker life.  The idea of weak and boring gods with only the ability of persuasion wasn't very exciting to me either to be honest, even though I think it could be interesting if used in a less selfish and more extravagant way.

Overall, I guess though it was well written and had a sort of different approach, The Anansi Boys just wasn't to my cup of tea, it's hard to read a book where you don't even like the main character.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find that copy of Sandman...

-Dan