Oooh! More British!
Most of you are probably at least familiar with this story from the Major Motion Picture made based on it, but be aware that the movie has a LOT more action in it, whereas Stardust has a lot more whimsy. Honestly, I prefer the whimsy, though they’re both VERY enjoyable.
Stardust chronicles the adventure of one Tristran Thorn, of the village of Wall in Victorian England, into the lands of Faerie. He goes in pursuit of a Fallen Star, in order to obtain the love of Victoria Forrester, the grey-eyed queen of beauty in the small hamlet. England and Faerie are separated by a long wall, the only gap in which is located beside the village named after that wall, whose inhabitants are only allowed through the gap into faerie once every nine years for a Market.
Tristran, through the aid of a dwarf/gnome/leprechaun, realizes that he knows where everything in Faerie is exactly in comparison to his current spot. Clearly, Tristran is at least half-faerie (which the reader already knows by this point, as the first chapter deals primarily with how his parents meet and his conception.)
Tristran obtains from his new friend a little nub of a Babylon Candle, and uses it to collect the star ahead of the other people searching for her – a Witch who wants to cut her heart out and use it to live forever, and a pair of noble brothers angling for the pendant which knocked her from the sky.
What’s that? Oh. Right. Yes, the star’s a her. All the stars are, in faerie. And this one is sarcastic, angry, and not at all happy when Tristran leashes her to take her back to Victoria. Hijinks ensue, and it is this part of the story which differs the most from the movie. There is no Captain Shakespeare, and Tristran isn’t morphed into a fighter of renown on the journey home. The brothers die in entirely anticlimactic fashion. Yet the story, itself, is stronger in Gaiman’s own words.
Read this book.
“Yes,” she said. “Which only goes to prove that you are indeed a ninny, a lackwit, and a… a clodpoll.”
“Dunderhead,” offered Tristran, “You always used to like calling me a dunderhead. And an oaf.”
“Well,” she said, “you are all those things. And more besides. Why did you keep me waiting like that? I thought something terrible had happened to you.”
Alex
Jourdan
sharplisa
