Anansi Boys

[lederhosen]

Finished reading it last night. A good read, but a little bit disappointing after American Gods; given that it's set in the same world, I was expecting this to be as intricate and carefully plotted, but it turned out to be much lighter than its predecessor. In particular, the ending felt a little bit rushed - it didn't have that magic "suddenly the faces become a vase if you look at them differently" feel that Gaiman so often achieves.

It indulges in a facetious style of humour that works very well for Adams and Pratchett, but sits oddly on Gaiman ("hung in the air exactly the way bricks don't" sort of thing). Maybe I'll get used to him doing that, but not just yet.

Also (only very mild spoilers), the book involves tales about Anansi - a West African trickster god - outwitting various other god-creatures long long ago. He makes it clear that the creature names are not to be taken too literally, but I still couldn't help responding to one such tale with "A tiger? In Africa?" and there were a couple of other moments where the internal logic didn't quite make sense.

Honestly, I think I'd have enjoyed it more had it come from another author. All in all, it has plenty of positives - as usual, the characters are interesting (in particular, it's nice to see a cop who actually has some common sense) and there are plenty of ideas in there. But Gaiman's name sets high expectations for me, and they weren't quite met this time. But there'll be a next time, I'm sure :-)

Comments

[hacked2death.livejournal.com]

So it's Mr. Nancy then? As the same person we met in American Gods? I was wondering about that. I thought maybe this had to do with Anansi and completely ignore what happened in American Gods.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

AFAIK the story's set in the same universe as AG, and Mr. Nancy is the same character as he was in that book, but the events of the previous book don't really impact on this one.

One thing that seems inconsistent, though - in AG, each land has its own version of each god, so there's an American Odin and a Norse Odin and so on, and it's implied that they each stay in their own lands. In this one, though, the gods seem to be able to travel.