I finally got to read Stardust after having watched and loved the movie. Unfortunately for me, I didn't get to read the one with Charles Vess's illustrations, which vexes me and I am determined to eventually get ahold of a copy of that. Those illustrations are there for a reason, I feel, but, as this book was just left in my basement by an old housemate, I couldn't hardly pass it up.
And indeed, I read it in one sitting. Interrupted by sleeping, but it was still really one sitting. After having read sciency books and environmental stewardship tales (neither of which I am completely through with, though the first is also a very good book) my hunger for a real Book, a Story. Fiction. was insatiable. It may have happened with anything, but Stardust is still a very good story. Very pretty, somewhat simple, enjoyable, but it is a faery tale and it is Neil Gaiman and I have come to expect that.
The book is, here's a shocker, not exactly what the movie was. The movie has some conventions that movies must follow (it has more action, for example) but having watched it first, I suppose it is only natural that the film is my favorite version. Even though I usually don't like movies half as much. It was such an enjoyable movie with such fun characters. The book has a lot of fun as well, but there are less characters and my favorite characters (the pirates) and arcs from the movie aren't really here. Usually it is the other way around, but usually I read the book first as well.
Stardust is unashamedly a romance story. It advertises itself as such and you know it to be one by the end of the first chapter. Thus, you know where this is all going. But like any good romance, there is much more going on than just two people falling in love. There is adventure here and talking trees (Tori Amos, apparently) and the witchcraft of the land of faery. And there is good and humorful prose. As I expected from the first hints of Vess's illustrations, the book is more of a "Faery Story" than the "fairy story" the movie was. I hope this attracts some readers.
One thing I find interesting about the reception of Stardust is how hung up people get on some short sex scene. It is a romance, after all, which leads to The Act. I am not sure Neil was trying to be "daring" with its inclusion, or "dumb". It is no more or less graphic than the violence which inhabits this story, but no one seems to care about that. The story is advertised as a "Faery Story for Adults", but I would give this to a child of 10. They'd love it.
Stardust builds itself up for a picturesque, almost Disneyesque, conclusion and then ends with an almost out-of-place realism. The movie, not written by Gaiman, has an ironically more mythological end and is one of the things I like about it more. But I appreciate the wisdom espoused by the book. It does mean more in a more literary sense.
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