Anansi Boys

Before now I had never read anything by Neil Gaiman, I was familiar with some of his stories and movies such as Coraline, and I was curious to see what all the hype was about. After reading Anansi Boys I was sold, Neil Gaiman is well...pretty amazing. His stories have a different approach than most. Its hard to place what exactly it is that gives him his flair, but it works. He creates these new worlds that are, on the surface the same as ours, but once you really dive in you realize there is so much more. The way he presents the concepts make them see completely plausible and they could really be going on in our world and we just never noticed. The characters are very dynamic and each have their own set of distinct characteristics that make them special, well all except for Fat Charlie, or at least that's what he thinks. He comes off as a very average guy but he transforms into more than he ever thought he could be. He had the qualities all along he just never realized it.
What was also interesting about the characters is that they are black. Which I didn't realize until it was mentioned in class and I was already 3/4th's of the way through the book. I probably would of gone the whole book thinking they were white if someone hadn't told me. It was very interesting how Gaiman never mentions it. Once you find out, it fits and makes sense, but its hard to realize on your own. In most books the characters are white unless you are told otherwise, and so apparently I assume that in all books the characters are white. Especially since they lived in the UK it seemed to make sense.
But on another note I enjoyed Gaiman's God concept, and how they rooted from African stories. The concept of all of the gods as animals is very interesting and gives them unique qualities. I enjoyed how every god possessed the qualities that makes their animal unique, the strengths and the weaknesses. After reading this I realized that I will have to read the book "American Gods" by Gaiman as well to see how he expands on the concept. It is a unique way of viewing gods that I don't hear about very often.