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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/anansi.jpg]]
2
3''Anansi Boys'' is a 2005 novel by Creator/NeilGaiman, set in [[TheVerse the same fictional universe]] as his earlier ''Literature/AmericanGods'', although not a direct sequel to that story -- more of a LighterAndSofter spinoff, and it was conceived earlier. The protagonist is the nice but unambitious and chronically unlucky Charles Nancy -- nicknamed 'Fat Charlie' by his father at age 10 and dogged by the name ever since, despite not actually being fat -- who's somewhat nonplussed to be told that his recently deceased father was the African trickster god Anansi. Oh, and the reason Fat Charlie doesn't have his dad's godlike powers is that they went to the brother he never knew existed, who he can contact by giving a message to a spider. Not believing a word of this, Fat Charlie nevertheless gets drunk and tells a spider to invite his brother to come for a visit.
4
5Within a couple of days of Spider turning up, Fat Charlie has lost his job and fiancée, and is also wanted by the police. Willing to do anything to make his brother go away again, he finds a way to contact the other gods and makes a deal. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero And then things start to]] ''[[NiceJobBreakingItHero really]]'' [[NiceJobBreakingItHero go wrong.]]
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7Creator/LennyHenry has voiced the audiobook and voiced Mr Nancy in a BBC Radio adaptation. A film version allegedly fell through because [[ExecutiveMeddling the studio]] wanted [[RaceLift a predominantly white cast]] (despite the characters' Caribbean heritage being central to the mythic elements of the story), and Neil Gaiman steadfastly refused. However, he eventually resumed working on [[Series/AnansiBoys an adaptation]], which was originally supposed to be a BBC mini-series, but is now [[https://www.thecinemaspot.com/2020/05/15/exclusive-anansi-boys-miniseries-in-the-works-at-amazon/ being made into a mini-series for Amazon Prime]]
8----
9!!This book provides examples of:
10* AbusiveParents: Mr. Nancy strides the line between this and AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents. It's one thing to play little pranks on your child; it's quite another to use your powers to give him a nickname and InformedAttribute to make him the world's ButtMonkey. [[spoiler:Charlie only grows out of it when he has to fight.]]
11* AMythologyIsTrue: While it is [[AllMythsAreTrue part]] of the same universe as ''Literature/AmericanGods'', this story deals exclusively with West African and Caribean mythology.
12** The quartet of grumpy old women Charlie knew as a boy, one he was certain was a witch. He was right, but they didn't use magic until he needed them to, and they were grumpy and disapproving, but ultimately friendly and sympathetic to his cause.
13* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: Fat Charlie's father even ''dies'' in an embarrassing way.
14* AnimalMotifs: Grahame Coats' is a weasel. [[spoiler:He even takes that form when he gets sealed away with Tiger.]] Anansi and Spider's are the latter's namesake.
15* AxCrazy: [[spoiler:Grahame Coats]], eventually.
16* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler:For Charlie anyway. Spider hasn't gotten there yet. Gods have a rough time of it, but they're half-and-half, after all.]]
17* BedTrick: Spider gets Rosie to have sex with him by impersonating Charlie.
18* BigBad: Tiger, who wants Anansi's power over stories for himself.
19* BigDamnHeroes: A wholly unexpected role for venomous spiders.
20** [[spoiler: Maeve Livingstone]] might also qualify.
21* BlackAndGreyMorality: To be honest, Tiger and the Bird Woman have pretty good reasons to be upset. Anansi can be a righteous asshole and is known for tormenting them and many other gods, who merely refuse to help Fat Charlie, rather than actively seek revenge. Of course, they are just as liberal in their own JerkassGods tendencies, and they're targeting Anansi's sons for RevengeByProxy, so any sympathy points they may have dry up pretty quickly.
22* ButtMonkey: Fat Charlie, though it wears off by the end.
23* CallingTheOldManOut: Fat Charlie does this to Mrs. Higgler. [[spoiler:He also does this to his father, though his father refuses to answer why he spent his whole life making fun of Charlie.]]
24* CardCarryingVillain: Tiger wants to get his stories back from Anansi by wiping out his bloodline mainly because he thinks the world should be a cruel, violent place again.
25* ChekhovsGunman: [[spoiler: A mermaid mentioned in a story near the beginning of the book shows up again near the end of it.]]
26* ChubbyChef: This is what [[spoiler:Spider]] becomes at the end of the story. He becomes the owner and chef at a restaurant, and, according to the book: "He's fatter than he used to be, though not as fat as he'll wind up if he keeps tasting everything he cooks."
27* ClicheStorm: Any attempt to converse with Grahame Coats results in this; he seems to think an abundance of well-worn un-witticisms make him seem far smarter than even a single original thought ever could. When he [[spoiler:takes Rosie and her mother hostage]], it even describes how delighted he is to have whole new vistas of clichés open to him that he never would have gotten to pull out otherwise. [[invoked]]
28* ClosetSublet: When Spider comes to visit, he stays in Fat Charlie's closet. Kind of. The closet door actually opens up into a ridiculously big room somewhere tropical.
29* CompanionCube: Fat Charlie is given a lime. For some reason, everyone except Charlie seems to take this as a matter of great import, and the lime is regarded as his companion or guardian somehow, despite not displaying any qualities beyond being, well, a lime. Fat Charlie even yells at it one point, and the narration has to come to its defense.
30* CompellingVoice: Spider's even works on computers, though it's apparently more a matter of ''lies'' than ''orders''.
31* ContinuityNod: Spider takes his coffee "dark as night and sweet as sin," just like the Slavic deities in Literature/AmericanGods.
32* ContrivedCoincidence: The author goes to great lengths to lampshade the entire core cast [[spoiler:all converging at roughly the same time on the island of Saint Andrews for mostly different reasons.]]
33* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: [[spoiler:Tiger is trapped inside a cave with a recently deceased, stoat-esque Grahame Coats for a very long time.]]
34* TheCoronerDothProtestTooMuch: The fate of the former dictator of the Caribbean island where the second half of the novel is set. After ruling with an iron fist for decades, he died by "falling out of bed". His fall was apparently hard enough to break a number of bones, and he didn't survive despite all of his bodyguards being in his room during this time, who did everything they could to "help" him.
35* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Grahame Coats, who has been embezzling Maeve Livingstone's deceased husband's royalty earnings for years, and murders Maeve when she finds out.
36* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: When the brothers are on the run from the Bird Woman, Spider complains that they could have avoided this if Fat Charlie had just asked him to leave. Fat Charlie retorts that he ''did'' ask Spider to leave; Spider was the one who refused.
37* CreepyCrows: The Bird Woman, one of ''many'' people who are still upset at Anansi's antics.
38* [[DatingWhatDaddyHates Dating What Mommy Hates]]: Part of Rosie's reason for dating, and eventually becoming engaged to Fat Charlie. [[spoiler: Spider too, but, ''unlike'' Charlie, she does fall genuinely in love with him.]]
39* DeadpanSnarker: Charlie and Spider.
40* DeathIsCheap: As a god, Anansi is implied to have suffered numerous deaths in the past. [[spoiler:Even his latest death is explicitly temporary, though given nearly everyone around him is mortal from their point of view it may as well not be.]]
41* DemonicPossession: [[spoiler:Grahame Coats by Tiger, which starts subtly after he kills Maeve. During the climax, he performs a FusionDance with Tiger and transforms into a large, shadowy tiger.]]
42* DivineParentage: Charlie and Spider are the sons of the god Anansi.
43* DoubleStandardRapeDivineOnMortal: Spider uses his supernatural powers to convince Rosie that he's her fiance and has sex with her when she believes he's someone else. [[spoiler: They end up together in the end.]] Of course, all he really did was tell her he was Fat Charlie. [[TheCasanova She slept with him entirely for his own qualities]]. [[spoiler:She does feel confused and conflicted about it when she finds out the truth, especially since she really did fall in love with him, and his feelings of guilt about the matter are what drive him to confess.]]
44* EasilyForgiven: Spider commits rape by fraud with Rosie, and [[spoiler:she marries him in the end.]]
45* EnfantTerrible: [[spoiler:Charlie, before Spider is split off from him.]]
46* EvilFeelsGood: After [[spoiler:murdering Maeve Livingstone]], Grahame Coats finds himself invigorated and proud of himself, and wistfully looks forward to repeating the act.
47* FairCop: Daisy, who is presented as the only police officer in the novel committed enough to her sense of right and wrong that she [[spoiler:globe trots to Saint Andrews to stop Grahame Coats despite the country's lack of extradition policies and her own lack of leave days to avoid punishment with.]]
48* FakeBrit: [[invoked]] Charlie is said to have spent years trying to overcome his American accent to sound British. He succeeded just in time for American accents to become trendy among his British schoolmates.
49* FakingTheDead: In one of the stories about Anansi, he pretends to be dead after requesting that he be buried in a vegetable garden so that he can sneak out of his grave and eat all of the food (while his family slowly starves). [[spoiler:In the main story, Anansi has "died" so that people will stop taking him for granted. He intends to come back to life in about 20 or 25 years.]]
50* FateWorseThanDeath: [[spoiler:Tiger and Grahame Coats are trapped inside Tiger’s cave by Spider, with Coats being turned into a stoat that continuously revives. Thus, Tiger has to deal with Coats, while Coats is continuously killed, and this will go on until Spider forgets about them.]]
51* FeatheredFiend: The Bird Woman, who's got a bone to pick with Anansi's bloodline.
52* {{Foreshadowing}}:
53** Near the start of the novel, Fat Charlie goes off on an angry rant about his father, and concludes that the best part about getting married is not having to invite his father, to the great chagrin of his fiance.
54** Fat Charlie has a dream about Anansi, who goes off on a tangent about starfish.
55** Happens again when Fat Charlie goes to the cliffs at the end of the world to find someone to deal with Spider. He meets Monkey, who says two things that later prove to be portentous.
56--> '''Monkey:''' [[spoiler: Who are you? What are you? You seem like half a thing.]]
57--> '''Monkey:''' (On learning that Anansi is dead) [[spoiler: Dead there. Maybe.]]
58** More subtly, Fat Charlie's bad luck disappears when he's in an unusually cheerful mood, [[spoiler:hinting that his emotions also influence the world around him, like his brother]].
59* ForcedTransformation: [[spoiler: Grahame Coats has been turned into a literal weasel by the end of the novel, rather than the metaphorical one he was at the start.]]
60* FormerlyFat: Played with. Fat Charlie was indeed fat at one point in his life, but only for a handful of years, from "shortly before the age of ten" to fourteen years old when he had a growth spurt and started exercising. Yet the nickname stuck with him for all of his life, thanks to his [[RealityWarper father]] giving it to him.
61** Then played with yet again alongside FormerlyFit. While Fat Charlie begins the novel as neither fat nor chubby, he is still said to be "soft around the edges", while his twin brother Spider is noted to be slender and much slimmer than him. Comes the end of the book, Fat Charlie is not called "fat" anymore, has lost his softness and became a "lean man", while Spider has become fatter thanks to tasting all the delicious food he cooks for the restaurant he owns, and the narration implies he might gain even more weight in the future. See HourglassPlot below.
62* FourthDateMarriage: [[spoiler:Two of them. In a strange way it kind of fits with the text because, well, they're gods.]]
63* FullNameBasis: Grahame Coats is always referred to by his full name in the narrative.
64* TheFunInFuneral: In a CringeComedy sort of way. Fat Charlie arrives late to his father's funeral but gives a heartfelt and emotional speech by the graveside... [[spoiler:turns out, he's at the wrong funeral]].
65* FruitOfTheLoon: A lime becomes a ''very'' important plot element.
66* GhostlyGoals: [[spoiler:Maeve Livingstone]] gets killed and is invited to move on to the other side, but prefers to stick around a while longer to wreak some vengeance. [[spoiler:She eventually does avenge herself by taking out Grahame Coats and Tiger, and moves on to be reunited with her husband Morris in the hereafter]].
67* GiantSpider: A rare, rare friendly example.
68* HatOfPower: [[spoiler:In and of itself, Anansi's green fedora isn't particularly magical, though his passing it onto Fat Charlie is the tipping point for vanquishing his lifelong nickname, gaining the confidence to sing in front out of others even when several lives aren't on the line, and realizing his demigodly powers.]]
69* HellBentForLeather: Spider is almost always seen in a black and scarlet leather jacket.
70* HijackedByJesus: Anansi really liked stealing other peoples' fables and myths, or at least claiming they were based on his antics.
71* HourglassPlot: When the twins meet, Fat Charlie is a nervous, unlucky and responsible everyman ButtMonkey, while Spider is a magical Trickster God party animal who goes through life without a care. And although Fat Charlie is not actually fat - Spider is described as being slimmer than him. As the story goes, Charlie learns to connect with his Trickster heritage and grows more confident and free-spirited - while Spider learns to care about other people and becomes more down-to-earth and human. Charlie arguably ends up as the more magical twin, as he learned how to warp reality via song. By the end of the book, Spider has become the owner of a restaurant and has grown fatter, while Charlie has become a singer and has gone slimmer.
72* InformedAttribute: In-universe. Fat Charlie was never actually fat or even very chubby but merely a little bit pudgy. By the time the story started, he hasn't been like that for years but the nickname stuck anyway.
73* InhumanResources: Grahame Coats fires his employees just before they qualify for the severance package; Fat Charlie is unusual in this regard, as Coats found him so useful that he's been employed for an unprecedented two years. This ends up biting Coats in the ass; [[spoiler:when he tries to pin his embezzlement on Fat Charlie, his employee turnover rate is all the evidence the police need to put together the fact that the embezzlement predates even Fat Charlie.]]
74* InWhichATropeIsDescribed: The naming convention for most chapters.
75* IronicFear: Fat Charlie is phenomenal singer, even when he's barely trying, but has such severe performance anxiety that [[spoiler: the powers he possesses never have an opportunity to manifest until late into the book.]]
76* ItsACostumePartyISwear: When he was little, Mr. Nancy told Charlie that President's Day meant you actually dressed up as your favorite President. Hilarity ensued, for Nancy, at least, when Charlie, not wanting to be just another Lincoln, Washington, or Kennedy, went as Taft.
77* {{Jerkass}}: The opportunistic, greedy weasel Grahame Coats.
78* JerkWithAHeartOfGold:
79** Mr. Nancy tends to swing wildly between the two.
80** Spider is a swaggering party animal who is trying to steal and/or ruin his brother's life, but he does care about him and Rosie deep down.
81* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Grahame Coats begins and ends the novel as an unpleasant, opportunistic and devious creature, albeit one with a methodology that at least has the decency to exploit his victims and employees at arm's length. [[spoiler:When he's caught by Maeve and forced to murder her to keep his freedom, he gets a taste for the act, helped along by Tiger gradually influencing him afterward.]]
82* KavorkaMan: Mr. Nancy, who is more than old enough looking to be most of the subjects of his affections' grandfather.
83* KarmaHoudini: Mr. Nancy for his antics and RealityWarper powers in turning Charlie into a ButtMonkey for a good portion of his life. [[spoiler:When Charlie asks him why he spent all his time making fun of him, Mr. Nancy says that they don't have time to be arguing. The ending implies that Anansi, as a trickster god, kind of ''had'' to use tricks. Even the Presidents' Day trick helped Charlie learn about about Presidents.]]
84* KnowsAGuyWhoKnowsAGuy: When Charlie asks the old women from home to help him rid him off his brother, [[{{Foreshadowing}} they tell him they did something that worked once]] that can't be done again. But they knew someone who could help, and sent him to the land of the Gods (more or less that of the African pantheon) to ask the Gods to catch a deal for assistance.
85* LadykillerInLove: Spider with Rosie, leading to some confusion on his part, as this usually doesn't happen.
86* LaserGuidedKarma: After an incident with his cab driver, Fat Charlie finds himself forced to carry a lime everywhere, because word got around about the man with the lime and everyone demanded to see it.
87* LeftFieldDescription: Creator/NeilGaiman does this particularly well here. "If on seeing Graham Coats you immediately thought of an albino ferret in an expensive suit, you wouldn't be the first."
88* LighterAndSofter: Compared to ''Literature/AmericanGods'', this is almost pure comedy. It's as good, though.
89* LiteralSplitPersonality: They even explicitly refer to it by the old trope name (StarfishCharacter). [[spoiler:Charlie and Spider aren't actually twin brothers, but rather Spider is Charlie's magical trickster nature which was split-off from him, leaving Charlie as an awkward and mundane everyman. Or at least at first. Charlie notes that, like starfish, he and Spider both grew from the severing into whole people, both capable of being down-to-earth and caring or free-spirited tricksters when the situation calls for it.]]
90* LittleBitBeastly:
91** The gods of the animal pantheon all have characteristics of the animals they're based on, such as tails, whiskers -- and extra nipples, at least when they aren't just the animals themselves, or some logic defying combination of both simultaneously.
92** Anansi himself is either this, completely human, or a FunnyAnimal, whichever he needs. It's all in how you tell the story.
93* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Charlie, at first. He thought he was an otherwise normal guy and a single child with an embarrassing father. Turns out his dad was a god, he has a brother with supernatural powers, and things just get weirder from there.
94* MagicalCamera: Early in the book, Spider passes into a photograph to travel to the location it shows. He later mentions he can go to any location he's seen, including by picture.
95* MagicMusic: It was used to create the world, apparently, and it's also one of Anansi's powers, usually resulting in some sort of RealityWarp. [[spoiler: Once Charlie Nancy embraces his heritage, he can use this power as well.]]
96* MaliciousMisnaming: Fat Charlie, no matter how hard he tries, can't escape from it [[spoiler:until he realizes his powers.]]
97* ManChild: Anansi and Spider alike are effectively flighty, womanizing teenagers in men's clothing, with several of Spider's interactions with his far more grounded and responsible brother framed the way an exasperated parent might chastise their rebellious child.
98* MilesToGoBeforeISleep: [[spoiler:After being murdered by Grahame Coats, Maeve insists on lingering on the mortal plane until she can avenge herself and her late husband, despite the latter's pleas for her to pass on and join him.
99* MonochromeCasting: All the main characters are assumed to be Black by default (Afro-Caribbean ancestry is a major plot point), to the point that race is only specified for the TokenWhite characters.
100* MyopicArchitecture: A police specialist bemoans Grahame Coats' security arrangements, pointing out that he installed a wonderfully secure door, then hung a lock on it that the specialist picked effortlessly. His exact words are that a five-year-old could jimmy it with a spoon handle. The specialist probably got it open by sneezing at it.
101* NeverMyFault:
102** Spider complains that he and Fat Charlie wouldn't be in danger from the Bird Woman if Fat Charlie has simply asked him to leave. Fat Charlie immediately reminds Spider that he ''did'' ask him to leave, and Spider was the one who refused to go.
103** Grahame Coats. He even finds a way to blame Maeve (the woman he murdered) for his unhappiness. Eventually he decides Charlie/Spider is to blame for uncovering his shady dealings.
104* TheNicknamer: Mr. Nancy is a supernaturally good example; when he nicknames something or someone, everyone else automatically starts using the nickname even if they've never been told it before.
105* NoChallengeEqualsNoSatisfaction: Generally Spider considers his ability to make people believe or do what he wants them to a good way to have fun with people, but when he starts to get emotionally close to someone he feels a lot more conflicted about it.
106** Grahame Coats as well. After he runs to the island, he gets dangerously bored.
107* NoNameGiven: Is Rosie's mother ever referred to as anything other than Rosie's mother or Mrs. Noah? (Her name is Eutheria Noah, but it's only mentioned once, and it states that no one ever used her name but her husband, and he's dead now.)
108* NonIndicativeName: Fat Charlie was never fat. Between the ages of ten and fourteen he was slightly pudgy, but the nickname got created and stuck.
109* NotSoHarmlessVillain: Grahame Coats [[spoiler:killing Maeve Livingstone]]. He goes downhill from there.
110* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Right up to the point when Fat Charlie [[spoiler:[[TookALevelInBadass figures out his powers]]. From the next sentence, the narration and the other characters just call him 'Charlie'.]]
111* OutgrowingTheChildishName: "Fat Charlie" was a nickname given to the protagonist in his childhood when he went through a brief pudgy phase. Thanks to his dad's RealityWarper powers, however, the nickname has stuck around well into adulthood when Charlie is not even overweight anymore. Eventually [[spoiler:Charlie is able to embrace his own abilities and identify himself as plain Charlie Nancy]].
112* PantsPositiveSafety: Grahame Coats sticks a few unsheathed knives through his belt. [[spoiler: He later receives a GroinAttack, causing him to fall down and stab himself badly in the thigh and bleed out.]]
113* PerformanceAnxiety: Charles Nancy has it so bad, he passes out when he gets up on stage to perform earlier in the novel.
114* PhysicalGod: Mr. Nancy, Spider and the rest of the animal pantheon. [[spoiler: Fat Charlie too, eventually.]]
115* RaceLift: Averted; executives wanted to recast the leads as white for the film, despite the fact that most are black, and African heritage is something of a plot point for the eponymous brothers. Gaiman shut 'em down.
116* RascallyRabbit: It is mentioned that some trickster rabbit stories were initially Anansi's.
117-->The story of the Tar-Baby, the one they tell about Bre'r Rabbit? That was Anansi's story first. Some people thinks he was a rabbit. But that's their mistake. He wasn't a rabbit. He was a spider.
118* RealityIsUnrealistic: Parodied. Mrs. Nancy writes to Fat Charlie from China that their Chinese food is terrible, and she'll be wanting the ''real'' Chinese food after she gets back home.
119* RealityWarper: Spider. He claims all one has to do is "Show Reality who's boss". His father is the same, teleporting an entire marching band to his dying wife's hospital room to cheer up. [[spoiler:Charlie manages to remove the "Fat" from his name near the end of the novel once he realizes he possesses the same talents.]]
120* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Daisy, although she's outnumbered by many unreasonable ones.
121* SandInMyEyes: "I'm not crying. It's the rain on my face." Mrs. Higgler isn't fooled.
122* SanitySlippage: Grahame Coats starts to lose it after escaping to St. Andrews, from a combination of his paranoia, boredom, and [[spoiler:being slowly possessed by Tiger.]]
123* ShowSomeLeg: Flashing is used as a diversion, but it's played with in that the rear end in question belongs to the extremely bony Mrs Noah, so the would-be assailant is {{Distracted By The|Sexy}} FanDisservice.
124* SealedEvilInACan: What happens to [[spoiler:Tiger and Grahame Coats]].
125* SiblingYinYang: Charlie's the nicer, uninteresting, and mundane brother, while Spider is all charm, swagger, and magic. [[spoiler:They both even out later on in the book.]]
126* SinkOrSwimMentor: Mr. Nancy after a fashion. When his son [[spoiler:was first split]] he commented that if he couldn't fix it himself he ([[spoiler:Fat Charlie/Spider]]) was no son of his (Nancy's).
127* SinsOfOurFathers: The people at the Cliffs at the beginning of the world refuse to help Fat Charlie because Anansi had done most of them wrong at some point. Especially the Bird Woman and Tiger.
128* SmallNameBigEgo: Grahame Coats. He is in fact a fairly successful talent agent for midlist performers (as a front for his ConMan operation), but acts like he rules the world.
129* SmoothTalkingTalentAgent: Grahame Coats again. He is clearly a weasel, but is able to charm his clients into believing he is ''their'' weasel. They are not correct about this.
130* SmugSnake: Grahame Coats, to the point that even mild-mannered Fat Charlie considers him a VeryPunchableMan.
131* SplitAtBirth: Not quite at birth, but at such a young enough age that Fat Charlie didn't know he had a brother. [[spoiler: Because technically, Spider isn't Fat Charlie's brother; he's an aspect of Fat Charlie's own personality who got split off and sent away by an angry old woman who knew some magic.]]
132* StealthPun: Daisy was named Daisy because at the time of her birth, her parents owned a tandem (a bicycle built for two).
133* TeasingParent: Fat Charlie's father Mr Nancy once convinced him that people [[ItsACostumePartyISwear dress up as presidents]] on President's Day. Charlie, not wanting to be just another Lincoln, went as Taft. Makes sense as Mr Nancy is really Anansi, the trickster god.
134* ThirdWheel: In Charlie and Rose's relationship, Spider "insists" on taking over the duties of being Rose's boyfriend, even taking on Charlie's identity. A second one is introduced at the same time when Charlie meets Daisy, and maybe, maybe-not slept with her during a night of revelry in mourning for Anansi.
135* TheOldGods: Since ''Homo Sapiens'' weren't the first species to talk about deities and tell stories, there is at least one pantheon that predates human gods. Charlie had to cut a deal with a deity (the "Bird Woman") who had apparently risen from a non-human species.
136* TokenWhite:
137** Grahame Coats is the only significant white character [[spoiler:and also the villain]].
138** Maeve Livingstone is also identified as white, and has a role as [[spoiler:Grahame Coats’s murder victim, afterwards a ghost]].
139* TookALevelInBadass: [[spoiler: The spirit of the deceased Maeve Livingston.]]
140* TookALevelInKindness: Spider after [[spoiler:his tongue gets stolen and he becomes a BadassInDistress.]]
141* TricksterGod: Anansi, ever so much. So was Charlie, until [[spoiler:he got split. Then Spider got all the tricksiness and Charlie was left as the responsible one]].
142* TropicalIslandAdventure: The second half of the novel is set in the Caribbean.
143* {{Troll}}: Anansi, naturally, who in both his past stories and current times exists both to enrich himself and fill the lives of those around him with mirth and humor... rather they want to laugh or not. Even his latest death was an elaborate "practical" joke.
144* TwinThreesomeFantasy: Grahame Coats has one of these about Maeve Livingston and her hypothetical identical naked twin sister, Maeve II.
145* UndignifiedDeath: It doesn't succeed, but at one point the Bird Woman tries to kill Spider with a flock of flamingos.
146** Anansi too. Heart attack on stage while singing karaoke, falling over and ripping the tube-top off of a blonde tourist from Michigan in the fall? He did it on purpose. It was hilarious.
147* VeryPunchableMan: Every time he talks with Grahame Coats, Fat Charlie has to constantly talk himself down by reminding himself that strictly speaking he would go to jail if he punched his employer.
148* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Grahame Coats has a slow and subtle one starting with him killing Maeve, allowing Tiger to step in. Characters note later how he appears to have lost it.]]
149* WeNeedADiversion: Provided by Mrs Noah and her [[FanDisservice astonishingly bony bum]].
150* WrongGenreSavvy: When Fat Charlie is arrested, he expects GoodCopBadCop interrogation, and tells the Good Cop as much. The Good Cop informs him that there is no Bad Cop in the wings and the police are already pretty sure he's innocent.
151* TheYardies: Referenced after Fat Charlie is arrested, as he notes that his neighbors now believe he is one of these.

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