Anansi Boys (6 points)

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    I really wanted to get into Anansi boys, truely, but Niel Gaiman did not make it easy for me. It took until about half-way through the book to get interesting for me. I tried to get attached to the plot and characters but Fat Charlie, Spider, and Rosie were really unlikable basically until the end. I get that they are supposed to grow as people over the course of the plot, but there was nothing for me to hold onto as likable. Fat Charlie was both the straight man and the coward, which made me want to see him fail and get better more than anything, but I felt like the time it took for Gaiman to build up to that payoff was tiresome. I only stayed engaged for Grahame Coats who was the best part of the book.

    In all of the build-up that Gaiman does in the first half, the parts from Graham Coats’s perspective are so camp in it’s villany that it was super enjoyable. Daisy’s perspective was a close second, though, because of her no-nonsense attitude. It is obvious that there was a lot of thought put into the stories and perspectives used, which I give a lot of props to Gaiman and his editors for. Yet, despite how much I disliked the first half, the second half really made up for it. I think out of everything, the payoffs were the best written parts of the novel, feeling completely within the established magic system. Although I am not a fan of the “everyone gets married and has kids and lives happily ever after” type of ending, it fits the storytelling theme that seemed to be the crutch of the whole narrative. Tiring and fun to read overall.

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