ROBERT SHEARD
  • Home
  • Books
    • Money for Life
    • The Unemotional Investor
  • Reviews
  • Review Index

Anansi Boys

8/6/2017

 
Picture
​The next installment in my great road trip audiobook marathon is one I’ve had in my library for a while. Not too long ago, I read (or listened to) a handful of Gaiman books, but for whatever reason, I didn’t get to Anansi Boys.

Like many of Gaiman’s books, mythology forms the basis of the story. He takes the Anansi trickster stories and riffs on them. In this particular one, Anansi’s son Fat Charlie is shy, non-magical, a disappointment to the god. But when Anansi dies of a heart attack, Fat Charlie learns he has a brother he didn’t know about–Spider.

The book is the story of the hijinks that ensue once Spider enters Charlie’s world, and how their joint adventure shows both Charlie and Spider their real selves.

On many of Gaiman’s audio books, he does the recording himself, and those are wonderful. In this case, another actor handles the narration and does a fair job. But I was frustrated at what felt like wild inconsistencies in the characters’ voices and accents. Because of distractions on the road, I was trying to keep track of the dialogue by the voices when I missed a dialogue tag, but that wasn’t always possible with the inconsistencies. 

So this may be one I would recommend reading directly instead of listening to on audio. That said, the accents for some of the characters were hilarious and that would have been lost on me if I read it myself. So there you have it; it’s both good and a problem. 

I have just one day of driving left, and one final audio book ready to go. And it’s a much longer one than my drive tomorrow. But I’ll start it and see how it goes. But for tonight… Game of Thrones and sleep.


Comments are closed.

    Archives

    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.