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Stardust tells the story of a rural English village known as Wall in the 1800s, with a large stone wall separating it from a Faerie land beyond. Here, a young boy named Tristran Thorn falls in love with a beautiful, arrogant girl named Victoria. Tristran spills his feelings to her, and she promises him that if he retrieves a fallen star and brings it back to her, she will marry him. Tristran embarks on a journey to locate the star–through the stone wall and into the Faerie realm. Crossing through this barrier has been illicit throughout time. Little does Tristran know, the falling star is treasured by many, and he is not the only one searching for it.

Whimsical charm, fantastical characters, beautiful prose, magical adventure–this fairy tale written by Neil Gaiman has all the makings of what pulls me into a story. At times I was spellbound. The prose is lovely and reminded me of The Last Unicorn. With that said, it was borderline too descriptive for me at times, and it veered off occasionally, but the story held my interest until the end.

What made this an even more enjoyable experience was reading the physical book with the audio performed by Neil Gaiman himself. He does such a terrific job with all the different voices of these characters that he’s created. I highly recommend the audio along with the physical book. My goal now is to find the illustrated edition of this book for our collection.

The only issue I had with Stardust was the secondary characters. My brain stuck with Tristran because he is the main character and the only character that gets significant development. What intrigued me with Tristran is that he is an ordinary boy and quite naive, but something beautiful happens with his character, which truly grabbed me. Fortunately, this happened because I could not connect with any of the other characters in this story. A minor niggle was a time forward early on, but it is necessary to show Tristran’s history to indicate his origins.

Stardust is an adult fairy tale that contains adult content, including one or two graphic sexual scenes. There are also scenes of violence and death. They are short-lived, but the prose may also be a little advanced for younger readers.

Overall, I found this fairytale exceptional, and despite a few minor niggles, I enjoyed it immensely. Neil Gaiman’s wild imagination with his inventive stories never ceases to amaze me. I am excited to move on with more of his books.

4****

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