 Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, the possibly but definitely not sequel to American Gods. It was published in 2005, four years after American Gods came out. It's an urban fantasy set in the world of American Gods, meaning that the same concept of anthropomorphized beliefs walking around as gods is a thing in this world. And we follow the son of a character that originally appears in American Gods. Mr. Nancy, aka Anansi the Spider, has a son, and we follow that son as he lives his life in England. He does not have the gifts that his father seems to have. He's a pretty average Joe, all-tolls, and he actually has generally quite bad luck. But when his father, Mr. Nancy, dies, then Charlie Nancy is confronted with a whole bunch of weirdness suddenly in his life. Okay, so is it a sequel? I mean, Wiki says no. But a lot of websites, bookstores, editions will label it as American Gods too. So, I don't know. There's no doubt that it's connected to American Gods, that it's related to American Gods. But in every other sense, is it a sequel? Like no, not really. You don't have to have read American Gods first. American Gods doesn't end on a cliffhanger. We were like, oh, I need to read Anansi Boys to close the loop on that. It can absolutely be read as a standalone. And American Gods, frankly, doesn't do all that much to explain the whole nature of Gods, really. Game and doesn't really do hard magic. So it's not like you're missing some really important information, like exposition. You're gonna pick up how the Gods and how that kind of stuff works. If you're gonna pick it up at all, you're gonna pick it up pretty much just as well in Anansi Boys as you would in American Gods. Again, Mr. Nancy does appear in American Gods, but he's not the main character or even among the main characters. And there isn't really anything you'd need to know about him from American Gods to make sense of him or to make sense of Anansi Boys. The events of American Gods have very little to no bearing on what happens in Anansi Boys, so it's not like you need to know the state of the world or anything like that. It seems to me that after having done American Gods, Gaiman had some other ideas for things that he could do utilizing this concept of the anthropomorphized belief God thing. So I think he just had some other ideas, and he had come up with this concept in American Gods, and so he just set it to write a different book doing something completely different in terms of the story or the themes and things like that. Just like another way to utilize this concept, but it's not a sequel in any other sense. Okay, so who is Anansi? So I was kind of surprised, or am surprised by how many people don't know or have never heard of Anansi the Spider. I am by no means an expert on frankly any mythology because I don't really like mythology all that much, but I remember hearing stories about Anansi the Spider when I was in grade school. I don't know if I just got luckier if that's like really unusual, but like in school we, when we had like stories read aloud to us, I remember there being like, they would, you know, feature like folk tales that are like not the ones you know, like not the Grimm's fairy tales. So they'd tell stories from other parts of the world, and I remember among them being some Anansi the Spider stories. So Anansi the Spider is a trickster and god that is featured prominently in West African, African American, and West Indian folklore, much like Loki from the Norse Pantheon. Anansi is known for his cunning, for his creativity, for his cleverness, his trickery, it's his ability to outwit and outsmart his opponents, not like brute strength that makes him so successful. Be wise, be brave, be tricky, am I right? And again, like Loki, he isn't necessarily the hero of the stories he's in, neither is he necessarily the villain of the stories that he's in. He can be both an ideal to aspire to and a cautionary tale, sometimes both in one story. Okay, so whether it's a sequel or not, how does it compare to American Gods? Well, American Gods is this massive sprawling all over the place meandering tome that is quite massive also in scope, not just in page count. And Anansi Boys is pretty much exactly the opposite. Where American Gods is about like the entire world of gods and men, Anansi Boys is really just about Mr. Nancy's family. That's it. And so the problems are much more intimate and specific and personal. There is some similarity, I would say, between the the protagonists Shadow Moon and Charlie and Anansi, which I don't know that that would be intentional. I think it's more just game and telling on himself like he has a way that he constructs protagonists a lot of the time. And so there's some similarity between the two. So they're both kind of directionless, kind of unlucky in love, confused, swept up in things that they don't quite understand. They're frustrated at being manipulated by forces that they don't understand. But there are definitely some differences. Charlie is more of a person than Shadow is. A lot of people complain about the kind of lack of personhood and lack of agency of Shadow in American Gods. So if that bothers you a ton, Charlie's a little bit that way, but he definitely has, I think, more of a presence and a personality and things that he wants and things that he's doing more than Shadow. Charlie has a life. He has goals. He has desires. And though he is tricked and manipulated by others, he's, I think, still the main driver of his actions, definitely more so anyway than Shadow Moon. Gaman is frequently humorous in a lot of his works. He's no Terry Pratchett. He's just not that interested in being comedic all the time. Oh, his books feature some humor. And I would say that while American Gods has some moments of humor, Anansi Boys is overall much more humorous just in general and has a lot more silly moments in it. And I think the overall tone of Anansi Boys is, again, partly just because the stakes of the story are so much lower. The tone of the story is a little bit more comedic. And then themes, there are some similarities in terms of the themes because they both deal with kind of the nature of belief by necessity, by virtue of having this concept in both of them. But Anansi Boys is more so about the nature of stories and storytelling, whereas American Gods is more about the nature of belief itself. They both have similar themes. They, I mean, they both have both themes. American Gods does have storytelling narrative themes, and Anansi Boys does have themes that relate to the nature of belief. But if I was to choose kind of like one big all caps theme, then American Gods is about the nature of belief, and Anansi Boys is about the nature of stories and storytelling. And I think having these different emphasis, no, that's not the plural of that. Having each one have its focus slightly elsewhere. It's a chicken or the egg, of course, but I think that has some bearing on why the tone and vibe of the books is different because depending on what you're focusing on is going to kind of like shape the type of story you're going to be telling. Not to be completely circling, looping around and around the nature of storytelling, having an effect on the story and the nature of the story that you're telling, but... Should you read Anansi Boys? I mean, not if you aren't a fan of this whole anthropomorphized beliefs thing, this concept. If you didn't like that, well, it's, you know, don't read it. If you need to have hard magic systems, honestly, I would tell you just not read Gaiman at all, but definitely not Anansi Boys. If you don't enjoy Gaiman's weirdness for lack of a better word, so things being kind of unexplained and strange and random and bizarre and kind of gross and just kind of out there, I mean, if you don't enjoy Gaiman's humor, again, Anansi Boys is even more humorous than American Gods, so if his sense of humor is not your sense of humor, then steer clear. And if you're not interested in storytelling itself being the topic of a story, which is quite meta, metatextual themes in general don't appeal to you, then yeah, steer clear. And if you want something exactly like American Gods, then also don't read Anansi Boys, because it's extremely different from American Gods. So if you wanted more of the same, you will be disappointed. But you should absolutely read Anansi Boys if you did enjoy American Gods and you would like to see some of the concepts and ideas in American Gods taken and used in a completely different type of story, a more intimate, smaller scale story. If you enjoyed the character of Mr. Anansi and would like to see more of him, if you enjoy Gaiman's unique style, his strangeness, his humor, if you don't mind or if you specifically enjoy stories that are more high concept, not really grounded, not realistic, not really intended to be fully understandable or explainable. And if you never read American Gods because this meandering, sprawling, directionless tone did not appeal to you and you much more are interested in a smaller, more intimate, smaller in scale, smaller in scope story. But you never read American Gods and so you thought you couldn't read Anansi Boys because it was American Gods too. Well, it's not. You're basically a standalone and if you want something really different from American Gods because you've no interest in reading something like American Gods, then you should read Anansi Boys because it's really different from American Gods. My thoughts? I enjoy it. It's not my favorite Neil Gaiman book, but I definitely enjoyed it more the second time and I enjoyed it the first time as well. Don't get me wrong. I think American Gods is more impressive in terms of what it sets out to do and then what it accomplishes, but Anansi Boys is more fun and I think Anansi Boys is a great example of Gaiman doing a lot of the things that he does best. His like efficient and distinct characterization where he gives you one sentence and you've got it. You know this character? You totally get who they are, how they look, what makes them tick. Like that never ceases to impress me. Is um quirky and inexplicable magic that kind of only makes its own kind of sense and his ability again to take the magical and make it mundane while making the mundane magical, imbuing everyday objects with wonder while these like really massively wondrous things kind of feel pedestrian? Is it my favorite Gaiman book? No, by no means, but would I recommend it? Absolutely. Have you read Anansi Boys? Would you recommend it? Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? Um as it stacks up with American Gods, which one do you like better? Whatever you want to let me know. I try to post videos on Saturdays, but other times as well so like and subscribe, join my Patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see you. Bye.