Stardust

I love fantasy literature; I'll be the first to admit it (I also used a semicolon in the first line of this post, so you know I'm on my game today). If you have a book that involves a dragon terrorizing a clan of pygmy Giants or a prolonged quest to find the Soul of Excalibur, I will most likely be reading it in the near future if I haven't already read it. It doesn't matter if the story line couldn't hold up against an ant sneeze (if anyone can prove that ants do in fact sneeze, I'll let you run this blog), I love fantasy enough that I'll engross myself in whatever straw the author grasped at for a story. So, when I was handed the book Stardust by a friend of mine I figured I would love it no matter what the so called "critics" said, which, were actually a lot of positive things. Upon finishing the work, I was content, but not the overwhelmed, grab my plastic shield and sword, let's-save-the-troll-princess nerd I usually turn in to.

The story of Stardust is actually quite fascinating and written by Neil Gaiman, who's British as hell, so this story obviously takes place in England. We enter the tale in a town called Wall, due in part to the small farming village being located at the base of a massive wall that separates our world from Faerie, the mystical land that reminded me mostly of Narnia (except without Peter and his teenage angst to annoy everyone. I see you Peter, and you don't know angst until you've listened to My Chemical Romance.). When our main character, Tristran Thorn (don't forget the second "r" in Tristran, it makes it more fantasy-like), sees a shooting star land somewhere in Faerie, he tells his hauntingly beautiful female crush, Victoria Forester, that if he goes and retrieves the star for her, she must promise to give him anything he desires. Adventure and a witch that is very similar to the one in Narnia ensue.

I speak lightheartedly about the novel because it's very playful in presentation. The world in which Tristran enters is full of wonder and magic and his adventure is cleverly woven in with two other story lines. One of these stories revolves around the lineage of the next king of Stormhold, and which of the three remaining sons of the dying Lord will sit upon the throne next. The third story is that of the witch-queen, who essentially wants to rip out the heart of the fallen star (who, by a stroke of fantasy literature, turns out to be a girl) and consume it in order to be young again. Playful stuff like that.

The story itself reads easily and is well thought out. Gaiman is technically sound in his telling of Stardust and it felt more like he was reading it to me (British accent not included) than writing it. All I had to do was merely sit back and enjoy a Chicken Soup for the Soul kind of tale of a boy who wore his heart on his sleeve. And I think that's what I enjoyed most about the work, that the main character was so similar to a lot of young men, like myself, who want to prove to their Beatrices that they would catch a star right out of the sky if it meant they could capture her heart. Tristran is a true lover, so we welcome him into the ranks here at Whiskey Before Breakfast as one of our own. Men, you would be surprised at how much you see yourselves in Tristran Thorn.

Where the story failed for me was how little of Faerie you actually discovered or saw. I thought being in a whole new realm would incite a few chapters devoted to the landscape, or the creatures, or at least a bullet point on the history, but Gaiman chooses to leave much of this out and only describe the immediate surroundings to his readers. This is all good and well, but being a fantasy junky at heart, I longed for the history of why the Goblins wanted to take Stormhold, or have a little light shed on how the trees in the forest came about growing acid leaves that would melt their prey's skin away. This could be a technique in order to preserve the magic in the story, but the world, as wondrous as is was, was only a smokey image of what it could have been. Also, the story is somewhat predictable and won't be blowing anyone's tunic off their chest.

All in all, if you enjoy technically sound fantasy I would say go get this book. Neil Gaiman is also a man you should have on your bookshelf if nothing more than to tell your non-literary friends, "Yeah, I read Gaiman. He's British."

Till next time friends!

-- Zach