{"id":182,"date":"2008-08-27T22:37:04","date_gmt":"2008-08-28T02:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/27\/review-of-stardust-by-neil-gaiman\/"},"modified":"2008-10-12T16:32:24","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T20:32:24","slug":"review-of-stardust-by-neil-gaiman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=182","title":{"rendered":"Review of Stardust, by Neil Gaiman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stardust.jpg\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Stardust<\/em><\/p>\n

by Neil Gaiman<\/p>\n

Harper Perennial, New York, 2006.\u00a0 First published in 1999.\u00a0 250 pages.<\/p>\n

Starred review.\u00a0 (Stardusted review?)<\/p>\n

My son was right.\u00a0 I should have read the book before <\/em>I saw the movie.<\/p>\n

The fact is, I loved the movie.\u00a0 One of my favorite movies ever.\u00a0 A delightful experience to watch.<\/p>\n

Yes, the book is wonderful.\u00a0 A fairy tale story that’s truly diverting.\u00a0 But can it be?\u00a0 I liked the movie better.<\/p>\n

Tristan Thorn grew up in the village of Wall, on the border of Faerie.\u00a0 There’s a story about his birth that some of the older folks in Wall know about.<\/p>\n

Tristan is trying to win the heart of his true love, when they see a star fall over in Faerie.\u00a0 Tristan promises to get it for her, not realizing that in Faerie, stars are beautiful women, daughters of the Moon.\u00a0 When Tristan finds the Star, she’s not happy about Tristan dragging her off to show his girl.<\/p>\n

Other, more sinister forces, are also after the Star, whose name is Yvaine.\u00a0 Tristan and Yvaine end up traveling a journey together with many perils.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid I found the original story less satisfying than the story in the movie.\u00a0 For the movie, there was a big climactic scene with a big showdown with everyone who is after Yvaine, and Tristan must defeat them.\u00a0 In the book, they seem to escape from most perils by virtue of simple luck.<\/p>\n

But the movie does show the same story — cleaned up a little.\u00a0 (The book is for adults, and contains a few “mature” details, which are cleaned up in the movie along with the more unified plot.)\u00a0 That story is truly delightful, in both its forms.<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on the main site at:<\/p>\n

www.sonderbooks.com\/Fiction\/stardust.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stardust by Neil Gaiman Harper Perennial, New York, 2006.\u00a0 First published in 1999.\u00a0 250 pages. Starred review.\u00a0 (Stardusted review?) My son was right.\u00a0 I should have read the book before I saw the movie. The fact is, I loved the movie.\u00a0 One of my favorite movies ever.\u00a0 A delightful experience to watch. Yes, the book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction-review","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}