Stardust

A true fairy tale for a modern age. Flowery prose that frequently delights. Well done narrative subversions.The characters however don't feel real. They never really question their situation or assumptions. And when it's revealed that they were in error, they effectively just shrug and move on with new knowledge. They feel a bit mechanical.

I love Neil Gaiman. I almost don’t even have the words for a proper review! The Ocean At The End Of The Lane and Neverwhere are two of my absolute favorite books, so I was delighted to find Stardust and add it to my reading list. This book is beautifully written and tells such a captivating, immersive, and special story. I never write book reviews, but I want to tell everyone to read this book.

This is by no means Neil Gaiman’s most ambitious work but if you’re familiar with his stuff this definitely has his voice (quite literally in the audiobook version). Gaiman bills this as a fairytale for adults. Not that there is much if any age in appropriate content (there is 1 F bomb but it is an aside and not even noticeable in the audiobook as it’s said under the character’s breath) but it is not a book particularly AIMED at kids as much as you might expect from a fairytale. If you saw the movie you are familiar with most of the characters and scenes though the tone of the book is much less silly than the movie. This is a short but well written story by a fantasy master, just not his most intricate work.

Tristan is a boy who lives in the city of Wall. He has spent his whole life being the meek shop boy and being overlooked by the woman (Victoria) of his dreams. Little does Tristan know, an adventure to reclaim his heritage is in store for him. His father is from Wall, but his mother is from a city beyond the wall called Stormhold. Stormhold is more mythical than reality, ghosts hang around kings, witches hunt for the key to immortality, unicorns exist, moons speak and stars watch.Admittedly, I read this because this is the group book for the Book Junkie Trials readathon. I have watched and rewatched the Stardust movie with Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer for years and it's one of my all time favorites. I have thought about reading this book but never had the motivation until now.So I have seen the movie so many time, my entire frame of reference reading this book is how different it was from the movie and so this review is told through the lens of how I see the book to the movie in comparison.I did enjoy this, but I think it should be kept in mind that this really is a children's story. I loved the premise for this, just as I loved the movie. But the characters did not feel super fleshed to me. There are so many cute elements that were in here that really made this a fun read. So many differences between the movie and this little book (I wrote down five pages to compare and contrast the differences). Most of the differences are in the details and not in the over arching theme to this book. I fell in love with the theme of this book and all the themes between the book and the movie were the same. Both had very good attributes.The book included a ton of elements that were a bit more magical. Stormhold was referred to in the book as being the land of Fairy and we never had that connection in the book. Also, there was a lot less romance in the book as well. We had a little bit but not a ton, just enough to let you know it was headed in that general direction. These were just a few of the differences. I also felt the book was slightly geared more towards children than the movie.Both and the book and movie stand on their own as two separate stories with the same theme and idea behind them. Both of them were enjoyable in their own way, but overall I love the movie more. All the scenes I fell in love with in the movie were only touched upon in the book. For example, the time that was spent on Captain Alberic's ship was cut so short in the book and those scenes added so much time for character development and magic in the movie that it made me sad to see that scene so shortened.I could go on and on about all the differences. But overall the book is a great children's story and I really enjoyed it.

Okay, maybe not the kind of Fairy Tale you would read to your very young children, but after delving through horror and dark fantasy, I found Stardust to be a refreshing, childlike break; minus the hangover of feeling like I was exposed to an excess of sugar and cotton candy. After all, Fairy tales used to be a bit brutal in their own right, and taking away all of the blood and violence in order to conform to today's "Politically Correct" standards also takes away from the lesson to be learned. IMHO.This tale is told with a simple exuberance, yet manages to hold up under the scrutiny of all us die hard Neil Gaiman fans, showing us that he has the talent to lead us along gentler slopes of the same deadly peaks and chasms he has taken us to in his other works. His playfulness shows through in Stardust as a novel, the way his chapbooks "Wolves In The Walls" and "The Day I Swapped My Dad For 2 Goldfish" did with his graphic novels.Tristin Thorn lives in the English town of Wall, right next to, well, the Wall. There is only one way through the Wall, a gap which is constantly guarded by the village folk of Wall; not to keep people from coming in, but to keep the inhabitants of Wall from crossing over into the land of Faerie. Once every nine years there is a huge fair within the field beyond the gap, and only then do the peoples from each of the lands mingle. Tristin is not aware that half of his lineage is from across the Wall, and when the day comes that he watches a falling star with the girl he wishes to marry, and promises to bring her back that very same star, his father Dunstan helps him to cross the gap into Faerie.Over in Faerie, it is time for the Lord of Stormhold to die, and pass along his Reign to one of his sons. Unable to determine which of his surviving sons is worthy, the old Lord tosses the Power of Stormhold (a topaz set in an amulet) up into the air and tells his sons that whoever finds the amulet will rule after him. This won't be easy for the offspring of the old Lord, for already four of his seven sons were dead, killed off by the living brothers in order to eliminate their claim to Stormhold.Also in Faerie live the Lilim, three ancient women who have lived on and on for forever, revitalizing their youth by eating the hearts from fallen stars. When the star falls, one of the ancient crones makes herself young again and sets out after the star.Tristin is helped along in his quest by some, and treated rudely by others, but always manages to get along by determination and, surprisingly, innocence. When he is transported by a magic candle to where the star had fallen, he is shocked to see that the Fallen Star is a girl, and she has a broken leg to boot.The adventures of Tristin in his journey back to The Wall and the market within the field are magical, fantastical, and sometimes just a tiny bit scary. Though the plot really does have a transparent ending, it still does not take away from the total enjoyment of Tristin's adventures and the predicaments he falls in and out of. All of the main characters coalesce in the ending, but the side characters we meet along the way are just as fleshed out and real to me as Tristin, Yvaine the Star, and Madame Semele with her mysterious bird.Go ahead and step through the Gap with Tristin, you won't be sorry you tagged along. Enjoy!

“There was a skyness to the sky and a nowness to the world that he had never seen or felt or realized before.”I don’t know how to express what I’m feeling now that I’ve finished Stardust.The writing style is very fanciful, I honestly don’t know how else to explain it. Sometimes the descriptions were so incredible I stopped to read them a few times, but that style carried over into every aspect of the book and in some cases it felt like it took too long for the author to get through a very short scene.Despite the fact that it felt drawn out I wanted to keep reading. I’m completely torn because I kind of loved it but I also kind of didn’t.

A nice faerie story based in a wee town called Wall. Named so because its surrounded by a wall! No one is allowed out. It is guarded all the time. Beyond the wall is where fairies come from. Tristan is half human half fairie. In the midst of declaring his undying love a star falls from the sky. He is then quested to find the star and bring it back and his hearts desire will come to fruitition. Here is where the adventures begin......Brilliantly written and a nice wee twist 😉

I do love this story. I love the way it is written, very much like an old type of fairy tale. It transported me instantly into its world and i literaally finished it within a day. The language is sublime. Yet i prefer the film. Unusuhal for me but i watched the film first and the book and film are strikingly different.I much prefer the emotion in the film and as much as i liked the book it is painfully emotionless.The star and Tristran just seem to suddenly decide to be together, you just have to imagine that they built up a relationship with no help from the author. Whereas the film uses their time on the air ship to bring the characters together.And although i do like the peaceful ending with the 'evil' witch, it did seem a little rushed and unsatisfying. And again, a huge lack of emotion. A total disregard for his newly discovered mother and his father left behind the wall.Rarely do I ever say a film is better than its novel, but in this case it's simple true. I loved the magic in the film. So much that i named my son Trystan. Anyway, book or film, this is a story that has touched my heart and the most enjoyable fairytale ive discovered :) x

I loved this story. I loved the film when it came out, not realising it was a book. The basic story is the same (ish) but the book has more detail and depth. The moral line behind it, from my view, is respect and kindness. It's fantasy made it interesting and exciting, it's themes, thought provoking and its characters intriguing.There were things that bothered me, and the main reason I gave 4 stars and not 5, the book isn't all that long, I felt like the characters had more to tell, but then, my imagination is still thinking about them 2 days on, so maybe that's the intention, who knows. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and would definitely recommend it to any, particularly those that enjoy fantasy.

Beautiful book, but definitely different from the film. I've watched the film Stardust countless times, so did not anticipate that it would be a whole different thing to the book, but yeah, they are worlds apart. However, I like them as separate things, and both have their own merits.Stardust is a fairytale, and whilst it may not be as adventurous as the film is, it still reads beautifully and has a wonderful array of characters. I loved Victoria in this especially, and Yvaine was great too, but my favourite part of the entire book was the ending; it was something that I did not expect at all, but it moved me.If you're going into this only knowing the film, don't expect it to be the same, but please do enjoy it for what it is, because it is a wonderful little book.