Stardust by Neil Gaiman - Book Review #27

Stardust

by Neil Gaiman

In the sleepy English countryside of decades past, there is a town that has stood on a jut of granite for six hundred years. And immediately to the east stands a high stone wall, for which the village is named. Here in the town of Wall, Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester. One crisp October night, as they watch, a star falls from the sky, and Victoria promises to marry Tristran if he'll retrieve that star and bring it back for her. It is this promise that sends Tristran through the only gap in the wall, across the meadow, and into the most unforgettable adventure of his life.

From barnesandnoble.com

I found out about the book, after I saw a movie based on it and I usually like more whatever I saw/read first (if I read book first, I would love book and criticize the movie and other way around). Therefore, I might be unfair to the Stardust - the book.

Let me start from saying that I really liked the movie. It was magical, romantic, funny fairy-tail, so since the movie was based on this book, it was safe to assume that the book will be the same. Unfortunately, I didn’t find same magic, romance and humor in the book as I saw in the movie. The novel was sort of blunt and plain to me. I didn’t feel any danger or love, or on that matter any strong emotions at all, neither it seems to me that characters did.

Nonetheless, novel was well written and was very fast, easy and sweet. Neil Gaiman didn’t raise any serious questions about good or evil, about death or eternal life, about inter-racial relations, or any other big, philosophical questions like most of the fantasy writers like to do. He wrote just a simple story about a journey in which no one was too heroical or too evil and no one wanted to conquer the world.

If you didn’t see the movie, I would definitely recommend you read the book first and then see the movie, maybe in this case you would have a different opinion about the book then me, because, actually movie is made very close to the book.