Because holy cow I do love his writing!
American Gods and Anansi Boys remain two of my favorite contemporary fantasy novels, but Stardust may now join them on the "Gaiman books I love" list. I'm a sucker for the "dark fairy tale meets everyday youth" genre--like John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things, for example--and Stardust is an excellent addition to the list. Set in the mid nineteenth century, the tale of Tristan Thorn, a young man who leaves his hometown of Wall and passes into the land of Faerie to retrieve a fallen star for the woman he loves, is exactly the kind of story I think I would read aloud to my children (though there is, I believe, one word that might need censoring for the young) if I had them. It's got villains who are scary, but not nightmare inducing, heroes who are common, and therefore somewhat relatable, and both male and female characters worth looking up to. If nothing else, it's the kind of book I can imagine reading aloud with my wife, because we do that sort of thing sometimes.
Stardust is a sort of sweet and slightly more modern version of something like Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan, and I think that's exactly what Gaiman is going for. It's funny, it's full of magic, it's heartfelt. It may not have the dark edge that Gaiman's more adult work has, but that's not really the point. It's a love story, at its heart, but it has the same sort of cleverness that Gaiman is known for. It's a frothy bit of nothing that feels like an old friend by the time you close its cover.
And that's a pretty great accomplishment.
Grade: A-
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