The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp

After Hurricane Katrina, demigod Jude has decided to lay low as his power of finding lost things has gone haywire. In a city where so many have lost so much, he is forced to seclude himself from people so as not to be overwhelmed by their loss. He is pulled out of his six-year exile by Dodge, the Fortune god of New Orleans, to play a game of poker with the local trickster gods, the winner fated to become the new “Luck of New Orleans.” Jude is quickly pulled into a fight he wasn't ready for, a game he doesn’t understand, and consequences that will affect the future of New Orleans. When Dodge turns up dead and Jude is the main suspect, he finds himself neck deep in a world he couldn't imagine and forced to push himself and his magic further than he ever thought possible. At each turn, Jude becomes less sure of who he can trust (these are tricksters, after all). With such a complicated plot, this story could well-have gone off the rails, but I'm happy to say that the rich details and complex characters were well-crafted and imaginative. This is a great read for fans of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods or adult readers of Rick Riordan’s demigod series.

- Portia

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Since discovering author Neil Gaiman last summer, I’ve been meting out his novels to myself like a harried mother with a limited supply of Halloween candy.  So, after surviving 2015 relatively intact, I rewarded myself with his 2006 novel, Anansi Boys. The novel proved to be a treat worth savoring as it exemplifies the very things that make a Gaiman novel worth letting your clothes lie wrinkling in the dryer: characters that are funny, endearing, and immanently human; a story that is fantastical and engrossing; and a narrative voice that is confiding and not a tiny bit cheeky.

Anansi Boys builds upon themes that readers of his earlier novel, American Gods, will find familiar; however, it can stand alone perfectly well.  The story opens in England, with “everyman” Charlie Nancy.  He’s your average work-a-day fella, the archetypical accountant: shy, quiet, unassuming, and unremarkable in any way.  When pressured by his do-gooder fiancé to attempt to contact his long-estranged father to invite him to their impending nuptials (Charlie’s reluctance to do so stems from what he perceives as a childhood of perpetual and near-fatal embarrassment at the hands of, via proximity to, and on behalf of said father).  Upon phoning a childhood neighbor in Florida, Charlie is surprised to find that his father has quite suddenly died. He crosses the Atlantic to just miss the funeral, and learns two things that beggar belief.  The kindly old neighbor, Mrs. Callyanne Higgler, informs him, matter-of-factly, that his father was the God/Legend Anansi, and that he has a brother, who inherited all the father-to-son god-like traits.  When asked how he might reach this heretofore unknown brother, Mrs. Higgler casually mentions that he need only to speak to a spider on the matter.  One long transatlantic flight and several glasses of wine later, Charlie, on a bit of a lark, does just that.  What follows from there is a wildly entertaining journey that crosses continents and worlds.

Lovers of fantasy and/or plain old clever writing need look no further, Neil Gaiman has it covered.

Posted by Jennifer Wilson