Anansi Boys picks up the themes of American Gods. While entertaining, it is not in the same league, although some of the scenes depicting the end of the earth where the gods reside are truly haunting. Unfortunately, the plot is too neat and too similar to other comic fantasy novels I’ve read. You can’t expect an epic on the order of American Gods every time, though, and this between-meal snack was good enough to tide me over.

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Neil Gaiman is a strange man, with strange obsessions and a strange talent for bringing disparate story elements together. This time we have an Afro-Caribbean spider god who dies and leaves behind two children who may or may not have inherited all of his powers and problems, the wickedly charismatic Spider and the bumblingly less so Fat Charlie, who meet after the funeral and proceed to permanently mess up each others’ lives in wild and entertaining ways. There’s quite a lot of Gaiman’s silliness mixed in with the darkness, as always, but I found myself laughing at the prose more than usual—in a very good way!

Very sorry to have finished this so soon. Thanks again, Neil!