Stardust (1998)

Very meh. Terrible main character. I was never invested in him, never rooted for him. What an idiot.

But the rest of it is great, so. ( )

It was a very quick and enjoyable read. Felt like reading a rom com at times. Ending was a bit abrupt and not as confrontational as I’d like.Some characters/moments could have been developed more as well. Movie is solid as well though it steers from the book a lot. ( )

I'll get raked over the coals for this, but I saw the movie long before reading this and I VASTLY prefer it to the book. I love love love the movie. I'm just kind of meh about the book. ( )

Um . . . wow. I love fairy tales and I love modern adult fairytales and honestly this was amazing. It's got the fairytale story telling and the grown up writing and it's actually just wonderful. I was worried that I would hate the ending like I do with a lot of books, but this had a very wonderful ending. ( )

I kind of fell down a rabbit hole and finally peeked out. I finished this up the other day and promptly forgot about it. Sorry to say, but the movie was indeed better when reading the source material to the movie "Stardust." I like the idea of an adult fairy tale, but man, this was not for me at all. I ended up not really caring for any of the characters, thought the plot moved really slowly, and I don't know, the ending was not anywhere near what I would consider a happy ending.

"Stardust" starts out with Dunstan Thorn and his tiny village that guards a wall between their village and Faerie. I liked the initial parts of the story and you get to see how once a day every few years how magic comes to the place. I actually found myself smiling and really enjoying the book. But then it lost me when the story moves towards Dunstan's son, Tristran. One of my friends just outright disliked the story since she said she has not read a single book when someone named Tristan doesn't end up sucking and she found the name Tristran pretentious. Sorry, I am just remembering her voice when she said this and it was hilarious to me at the time. Anyway, I just found myself bored by Tristran.

Both Thorn's (Dunstan and Tristran) do something foolish due to women. Though at least for me I loved what Dunstan ended up making of his life though. And part of me really wished that Gaiman had focused on Dunstan's wife. You could read heartache in her every movement and utterance, but it seemed like that was glossed over.

Tristran I found annoying. He goes off on a quest in order to have the prettiest girl in his village give him a kiss and marry him if he finds the falling star they saw and brings it to her.

The main part of the story is focusing in on Tristran's birth, the land of Faerie and the people that he meets on his travels. I have to say that when Gaiman focuses more on the adventure side of things the book works very well. But when he tries to bridge the gap between adventure, fairy tales, and more adult things such as sex, ehhh. I think of what Marissa Meyer managed to do with the Lunar Chronicles and just found this book lacking when compared to Cinder. I didn't find one character truly memorable and kind of wished that even some of the good guys had reached a terrible end because the way they are depicted in this book shows them as sucking a lot.

The flow was not that great after the first part of the story focusing on Dunstan. Honestly, once you get to Tristran crossing over to Faerie the book's flow was up and down. We get to the epilogue and I was happy to finally be done with this book.

I am going to have to say though if I had not watched the movie first I would probably have loved this book. But I loved the movie and loathed the ending of the book and how some of the characters I ended up adoring came across in book form. ( )