I first came to this novel by way of the movie. I was on an international flight, and I was staying up to fight off jet lag and get myself in the proper time zone. I watched seven movies in a row in that stretch, but the one that stayed with me the longest, and left the deepest impression, was Stardust. Not just because I love fairy tales done right, but because it was such a sweet story and had such great characters.

This review isn’t going to be about the movie (and not just because the book is always better!). So… let us fast-forward some years to a little over a month ago. I was at work, chatting with a coworker on the subject of relatively unknown Japanese movies about food, when he asked if I had read this book. I think my actual reaction was something like “OMGWTFBBQ!” because a bolt of electricity went through me. It was the same excitement I felt when I found out that The Neverending Story had also been a book! I picked it up almost immediately and it was all I could do to not devour it immediately.

Stardust is the story about love, and what it takes to find one’s hearts desire. It begins with a tryst between a human boy and an enchanted woman in the world of Faerie. She gives birth to a boy named Tristran, and he is sent to live with his father and stepmother on the human side of the world. Which in this story, is a place in England called Wall.

As a foolish boy, Tristran promises the most beautiful girl in the village a fallen star in exchange for anything he asks for. (Obviously, he’s not too much of a creeper, so this exchange wasn’t gross or anything.) She agrees and he decides to head off in the direction of the star, which is the land of Faerie. As it turns out, adventuring wasn’t as easy as he thought. However, with a little help from his friends, and a secret society, he makes it to the star, who turns out to be the beautiful woman Yvaine. He traps her, which she isn’t thrilled about, and so they head out so that he can trade her for his crush’s affections. Meanwhile, there are princes searching for her as well as witches who want to eat her heart. The whole ordeal is perilous.

During this journey, they are injured, almost die and people are killed right and left. They also start to fall in love, which follows after Tristran saves Yvaine’s life and she realizes that she cannot live without him. They make their way back to Wall, and as it turns out, Yvaine will perish if she crosses into the human side of Earth. Realizing he loves Yvaine, and with the new discovery of his mother, Tristran decides to stay in Faerie. Which is good, because apparently he is a new Lord (isn’t that true in all fairy tales?). He marries the star and they live happily… well, for the rest of his life, anyway.

As I wrote earlier, I love fairy tales. But not in a Disney-fied fairy princess way. I like the parts where the sisters in Cinderella cut off their own feet. My favorite part of The Little Mermaid? Where she makes the heroic decision to turn into sea foam rather than kill someone else. Perhaps I had a 6-year old’s idea of right and wrong, but these were my heroes and stories. As I got older, I loved the take-offs of fairy tales, such as Wicked. Robin McKinley’s Deerskin has haunted me ever since I read it as a teen.

Stardust is different somehow. It’s not a cover story, not a rewrite. It simply bursts with its own creativity and life. While it has the feel of something more traditional, it clearly is not, with its unique characters and story line. Tristran is a foolish hero who realizes quickly that he bit off more than he could chew. While it was a little problematic for me that he quickly realized that getting Yvaine to Wall would involve kidnapping, to his credit, he doesn’t have the heart for it. So that when Yvaine escapes, he follows her to save her life.

While I loved the story and the characters, I also felt that the other characters could have been better fleshed out. What was, after all, the fellowship or conspiracy about? It was like a bright thread that catches the eye, just captures the attention, and then disappears. There seemed to be so much more and I get the feeling that Neil Gaiman has this whole sub-story in his brain that he’s not sharing with us. I would love to know more, particularly in another book. (Give me more shiny threads!) I imagine that a stringent editor got a hold of the book and edited out more of the story. Which is fine, if plotlines were getting chaotic. However, this book was tightly written, so I also imagine that while poor Gaiman tried to take a stand, it was to no avail. And thus the conspiracy remains so.

No matter how old I become, fairy tales still have the power to capture my imagination and sense of wonder. In this respect, I urge anyone who hasn’t yet read Stardust to check it out. It does not disappoint.

  -- Sara Paige