Neil Gaiman is a bit of a weird author for me. This is only my second book I've read by him (the first was The Graveyard Book just last year) and whereas I was super compelled to keep reading The Graveyard Book, Anansi Boys was a drag that I had to force myself to keep reading a good portion of the time.
It's weird, because there is a lot in this book that I did really like. The stories of Anansi are ones which I am only faintly familiar with, so it was an interesting take on a mythos that I do want to do more research on. Additionally, I do find Gaiman has a rather engaging and entertaining narrative voice, with plenty of lines that made me chuckle (especially those about Florida). And the different narrative threads of the plot functioning like a web all coming together at the end emphasizes the tie between stories and spiders that Anansi puts forward.
But I just found it very hard to care? It's difficult for me to even analyze what I liked (and I do feel there is a lot to be picked apart and digested here, from the world building to there themes) because I couldn't get invested for the life of me. None of the characters are particularly likeable; Daisy and Rosie were probably the most fine, I guess, and Grahame Coats is a decent enough villain, but for the life of me I just could not stand Spider or Charlie. for 95% of the story. And that's not to say that characters have to be likeable, plenty of good characters aren't, but there has to be something there for me to be invested in. And Charlie's self loathing and Spider's lack of care for anyone besides himself for the first half of the book just completely put me off them for the rest of the book, even when they started to go through their character growth. I just, I didn't care.
I'm very disappointed with this read, not just because I had high hopes from my previous experience with Gaiman's work, but also because I do feel like there is a lot of good there. I just can't care enough to dig into it more because Gaiman failed to invest me in his story or characters.
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