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Catch a fallen star . . .
Tristran thorn promised to bring back a fallen star. So he sets out on a journey to fulfill the request of his beloved, the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester—and stumbles into the enchanted realm that lies beyond the wall of his English country town. Rich with adventure and magic, Stardust is one of master storyteller Neil Gaiman's most beloved tales, and the inspiration for the hit movie.
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Gaiman's story begins and ends with a fair that will remind you of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market":
"Backwards up the mossy glen/ Turned and trooped the goblin men,/ With their shrill repeated cry,/ "Come buy, come buy.".../ One set his basket down,/ One reared his plate;/ One began to weave a crown/ Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown/ (Men sell not such in any town);/ One heaved the golden weight Of dish and fruit to offer her:/ "Come buy, come buy," was still their cry."
As Laura of "Goblin Market"-fame learned, it is better not to sample the merchandise at such Unseelie gatherings. Dunstan Thorn, who "was not romantic" learns this lesson too, when nine months after the "Stardust" fair, a baby is abandoned at the boundary between Faerie and the English village of Wall with his name pinned to its blanket. Thus begins the story of Tristan Thorn who is raised as a proper Victorian lad until age seventeen. Unlike his father, Tristan is romantic and at the bequest of the most beautiful girl in Wall, he sets out on a quest through the Land of Faerie to fetch her a fallen star. Not just any fallen star, but the one Tristan and Victoria both saw on the night she refused to kiss him.
"Stardust" is stuffed with stock fairy tale creatures who have been blown loose from their moorings and brought to life in the most wildly imaginative way. Some of them make only token appearances, but all are memorable. Two of the most poignant are the boy who is turned into a billy goat, and a billy goat, turned into a boy. There are three truly evil witches, and one who is only so-so wicked. There are....well, read the book. Even if you aren't drinking while you read it, you'll feel drunk by the time you finish.
If ever there was a book that could be labeled, 'Drink me!', "Stardust" is that book.
P.S. The cover has nothing to do with the story
This truly is a fairy tale for grown-ups. It begins, "There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart's Desire. And while that is, as beginnings go, not entirely novel (for every tale about every young man there ever was or will be could start in a similar manner) there was much about this young man and what happened to him that was unusual, although even he never knew the whole tale of it."
There's a bit more to the story than that, and it isn't quite as simple as we're led to believe. Young Tristan Thorn from the village of Wall sets out with a mission and a certain amount of mystery about himself (that we're let into early on, if we pay just the slightest bit of attention).
Like Gaiman's hero in Neverwhere, Tristan is a good-hearted young man with the best of intentions. He promises to leave the village of Wall, where he has lived his whole life, to bring back a fallen star for the woman he loves -- in exchange, she will grant whatever he wants (which is, of course, marriage as he is a charming Prince type guy, the kind you find in fairy tales.)
What seems a somewhat simple adventure twists and turns into much more. Medevial times, fairies, unicorns, the moon, bad people (male and female) lead our hero on an exciting adventure and in the end he gets what he doesn't even know he wants.
This is a gentle fairy tale for adults by an excellent storyteller.
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