Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Anansi Boys
Book Review: a spiderweb of beauty and life and rediculosity and joy
Summary: 5 Stars
you know, when you reach the end of a good book, there's a certain sadness-- a bittersweet sadness like you've just lived through something amazing and dangerous with people you didn't know a week ago and now they're all going off without you-- a feeling of 'oh, it's here. i knew it would come but i was really hoping it wouldn't'. it's a feeling you have to sit in, to suffer through the way you suffer through something very good but very trying, something you have to let sit on your tongue and settle into the spaces in your brain, to shift around and find out where all the new pieces of you go as you metabolize this book and it merges with all the things you brought with you when you started it. as it becomes something you'll bring with you when you go to read the next book. anansi boys is one of these books, full of beauty and violence and life and myths and stories and spiders and wonder and the weight of reality. it leaves a mark, but not the kind you'll rub at to get rid of-- the kind you'll start arranging your clothes so it doesn't get covered up, the kind you'll tattoo around so it isn't forgotten. that kind of mark, that kind of book.Book Review: nothing not to like
Summary: 4 Stars
all gaiman books tend to read like the comic books that he was so great at. an old girlfriend of mine read my copy of Neverwhere and noted that the characters came off two dimensional. And to be fair, Neil has gotten far far better at novels since this effort. Anansi boys is fairly sharp, good setup, good imagery, humor, tight storytelling and most of the plots are tied off well. It's a good fantasy setup, though I saw many parallels in it with the old Sandman plots. Things like birds coming of people's mouths [Sandman's Game of You Cuckoo villain], the use of song as a power [like Orpheus], the four witches were like the Kindly Ones [especially when Fat Charley goes to them for help, like Lyta Hall does the Furies]. There are many of these and that's not unexpected, Neil's body of work is vast. Stardust is the better book but this one is a good quick read. Still, he didn't reveal the deal that Bird cut with Tiger... what was up with that? Or maybe I missed it.