Book Reviews of Anansi Boys

Another short and simple fairy tale along the mode of Stardust. I consider Gaiman's best novel to be American Gods and this semi-sequel (really more like a spin-off) shows his ingenuity. But his "fantasy world living along side the real world" is starting to wear a bit. His true talent is in short fiction and of course, his masterpiece, The Sandman. But he does need to expand on his plots. But, if your a fan, you could do a lot worse.

I love Neil Gaiman's sense of humor. He has a special way of pulling a reader into his stories. This story was well written, perhaps a bit more far fetched than a typical fantasy/paranormal story, but full of humor, off humor, irony and emotional perspective.

This book isn't for everyone, but I recommend it.

This was so different! I love mythology and this author was very imaginative.

Unique, well written, suspenseful - definitely enjoyed it!

Funny, touching, and a little bit of a thriller. Well written and a rewarding read.

I absolutley loved this book. It was an interesting story, great plot and characters. It's also loosely related to American Gods, which I also highly recommend!

A wonderful story about Charlie Nancy, who finds out he is the son of a god, Anansi, and meets his brother Spider. Extremely enjoyable, lots of humorous touches.

Great book - unusual story. Once I started this book I couldn't put it down. Well worth the read!

This book is much better if you've read American Gods first! If you've read a lot of fantasy, the plot is rather thin and easily guessed. Definitely middle-of-the-road.

When my daughter in law put this book on the CD player in the car, I thought oh my gosh. Do I have to listen to this for the next 5 hours? However, within 5 minutes I was caught up in the story of Fat Charlie and his cronies. From that moment on I was hooked. This book is funny, sad, laugh out loud hilarious and at times touching. I enjoyed it so much I have ordered another Neil Gaiman book, "Good Omens", which I have been told is a hoot all the way through. Good author, funny books.

An interesting exploration of family relations and how we identify ourselves. Through Neil Gaiman's unique perspectives, we see the world as it might be, with the magic and mundane, ordinary and extraordinary meshed together in a perfectly believable fiction.

not really a page turner like "American Gods" but definitely worth a look for a light summer read.

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 unbelieveable 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?

Fantastic! Once again, Neil Gaiman did not disappoint me.

Horrible. I hated it so much that I stopped reading it like halfway through.

When I first picked up this book I was expecting a beach read kind-of-thing. I immediatly got into it after a couple chapters and could not set it down. The book was so much more then I had expected. It is funny and entertaining. I would definatly reccomend it to a person of any age.

I adore Gaiman, but this is not one of my favorites.

Amazingly funny story about family, life and a little magic!

I was interested in reading one of Neil Gaiman's books after having read "Good Omens," which he co-authored with Terry Pratchett. I like Gaiman's writing style and the story was interesting. I enjoyed the book, but not really enough to read it again.

really a good, fun read. a great companion piece to "american gods." also a really fun thing to read a book where the default race is black and only white people are noted.

A thoroughly entertaining book. I look forward to seeing how it translates to film.

Very creative and very funny with likable characters!

The usual wit and style you'd expect from this author. A wonderful retelling of many old tales wrapped up in a brand new adventure!

From Publishers Weekly: "Starred Review. If readers found the Sandman series creator's last novel, American Gods, hard to classify, they will be equally nonplussed—and equally entertained—by this brilliant mingling of the mundane and the fantastic. "Fat Charlie" Nancy leads a life of comfortable workaholism in London, with a stressful agenting job he doesn't much like, and a pleasant fiancée, Rosie. When Charlie learns of the death of his estranged father in Florida, he attends the funeral and learns two facts that turn his well-ordered existence upside-down: that his father was a human form of Anansi, the African trickster god, and that he has a brother, Spider, who has inherited some of their father's godlike abilities. Spider comes to visit Charlie and gets him fired from his job, steals his fiancée, and is instrumental in having him arrested for embezzlement and suspected of murder. When Charlie resorts to magic to get rid of Spider, who's selfish and unthinking rather than evil, things begin to go very badly for just about everyone. Other characters—including Charlie's malevolent boss, Grahame Coats ("an albino ferret in an expensive suit"), witches, police and some of the folk from American Gods—are expertly woven into Gaiman's rich myth, which plays off the African folk tales in which Anansi stars. But it's Gaiman's focus on Charlie and Charlie's attempts to return to normalcy that make the story so winning—along with gleeful, hurtling prose." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

A tall tale by his author with a VERY vivid imagination. Lots of interesting characters and a story to keep you guessing to the end.

The dynamic duo, Fat Charley and Spider, take on the ancient gods and that evil-doer Grahame Coats with a little help from their deceased father.

Fantastic book in the Gaiman tradition follows an everyday man who finds out unexpectedly that he is in the lineage of a line of supernatural dieties; unfortunately his before-unmet brother got all the powers, and abuses them to his advantage.

Neil Gaiman writes an imaginative book sparked by the Anansi tales. Fat Charlie learns that his father -- who dropped dead on a karaoke stage surrounded by blonde tourists -- was actually a God. He finds out he has a brother he never knew about who inherited all the God gifts. Charlie tells a spider to send a message to his brother to drop by sometime. What will happen when Charlie's fiancee Rosie meets Spider? Why is Rosie's mom suddenly in favor of the marriage? And where does Daisy fit into all this? Why (and who) sent his brother away in the first place?

Great read! Humor, a little fantasy, and a coupla scary parts!! This may look like a youth's novel, but as an adult I throughly enjoyed it!!

First rate fantasy about a guy whose Dad was a God

Not as amazing as Gaiman's other works. But Neil Gaiman at his worst is still far more amazing than %99.9 percent of other authors out there.

It was cute. It's no American Gods...but it didn't actually annoy me, so I enjoyed it. He seems in this one to have fallen pray to the British predilection to cute, sappy endings. Like that Prachet guy. Don't they realize that life can only end in disaster? Still, it as a magic book, and those are good.

A perfect example of an "enjoyable read", this book keeps you entertained throughout. A bit of magic, a bit of fantasy, and a bit of humor all come together in this clever take on life...and an ornery boy.

Please see my review here

Read once, a nice clean fresh copy.