Stardust by Neil Gaiman

The Book: Stardust

The Author: Neil Gaiman

The Publisher: William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers

The Acquiring: Bought at Chapters for full price (something I rarely do) 16.50$

My Thoughts: I must confess, this was my first Neil Gaiman book. I know what you’re thinking… where have I been living all my life… I’ve been asking it to myself since I finished reading the first chapter in this book and I just do not have a good answer to that question. I tell myself and others that I’m not really into fantasy novels but that’s just a lie I like to tell them (and myself) so people don’t see me for the nerd I really am.

    I loved this book. It’s so magical and wonderful that I could not put it down. Time and space just seemed to stopped while I was reading it. I’d start reading it about an hour and a half before my scheduled bedtime of 11:30PM (well, I try to at least even though it never happens) and the next thing I knew it was 3AM.

    About half way through the book I kind of had a feeling where the story was headed but I could not stop reading. He’s such an incredible writer. I felt almost completely drawn into the book and the Stardust world.

 I picked Stardust as my first Gaiman book mainly because of the title… and the cover. I think it’s beautiful and enchanting as the book itself. I picked up American Gods in the same edition and I hope to collect the rest of his books as well.

The Lowdown: The book starts off in the peculiar town of The Wall. What’s peculiar about it is that there is a wall at the edge of town that divides the human land from Faerie land. There is only opening in the wall that is guarded by men who do not allow anyone or thing to enter or exit the opening except, every nine years there is a faerie market that is held in the pasture just on the other side of the wall that humans are allowed to attend. Visitors and vendors from all over flock to the little town. Dunstan Thorn, who is a young man set to marry a young highly esteemed woman from the town named Daisy, rents his cottage to a mysterious man who gives Dunstan in return ‘his heart’s desire’. The next day, Dunstan attends the fair and meets Una, a beautiful woman who is actually a faery princess enslaved to an old evil witch. She sells him a teardrop flower things and then they meet each other at night after the market has shut down for the night. You can guess what happens here….

The next day the market is gone, a month later Dunstan marries Daisy then I’m assuming 9 months later a basket is passed through the wall with Dunstan’s name on it… and voilà, we now have Tristran Thorn with a sister who is just 6 months younger than him.

Fast forward eighteen years… we have Tristran who is almost hopelessly in love with young maiden Victoria. He walks her home one night from the village store and they see a shooting star fall across the sky. Tristran tries to persuade Victoria to marry him and she makes a deal with him, if he can bring her back that fallen star then she will grant him whatever he pleases.

He starts to make arrangements to set out on his quest. His father walks with him to the wall and helps him get past the guards. Tristran begins his journey across the wall into the Faerie land on to find the fallen star and return it to Victoria.

The Goodreads Rating: I gave it 4 stars…. because… even though I enjoyed every minute of it, I could almost sense how most things were going to turn out about halfway through the book.

PS:  I just found out this is a movie… I must watch!