Synopsis: Beyond the Village of Wall lies the enchanting and mystical land of Faerie, where all beings live and breathe magic. Tristran Thorn, a young boy from the village is hopelessly in love with the beautiful Victoria Forester and would do anything for her; including crossing the wall to fetch the fallen star she so desires. As Tristran ventures into the land of Faerie, he will encounter strange and beautiful creatures. Will he find the fallen star and bring it back to the village? Will he be able to make it out of Faerie in one piece? 

Cover Gushing Worthiness: The cover of Stardust is beautiful with a doubt. The colours used in the cover of the edition I read (pictured in this review), along with the ivy like designs gives it a magical and whimsical feel.

May Contain Minor Spoilers 

My first experience with Neil Gaiman’s work was with The Graveyard Book and later Neverwhere which fell short on the enjoyment scale for me. I decided to give Stardust a try since there was a movie adaptation of it and I was curious about the book. Sadly like Neverwhere this book wasn’t for me.

First off as I read this book I watched the trailer of the movie adaptation and the film is nothing like the novel.  Plot wise, the story has so much potential yet it falls short of spectacular. The pace of this book was extremely slow and I found myself wanting to drop it and move onto something else. There are so many little descriptions which take up so much of the book and I wasn’t fond of it. Also while the movie trailer showed a lot of action sequences, the book was anything but that. There was hardly any sword fighting, even the small moments where swords and magic collided were flat and boring. Most of the time I found myself thinking “But…the movie had a lot more action than this.” Also I found the story to be poorly explained, there were some parts in the book which confused me and I thought there could have been further explanations to what was occurring. Adding to the poor explanation, I didn’t see the chemistry between Tristran and Yvaine and I hate it when I don’t connect with the main characters.

Character wise, like in Neverwhere I wasn’t emotionally invested in them which disappoints me. I didn’t particularly like Tristran or Yvaine. Tristran was a fool in my opinion and I didn’t find any qualities in him that I truly admired. I found him to be a weak and annoying protagonist. Yvaine (the fallen star) is equally unlikable; she is rude, haughty and always finding fault with Tristran. The secondary characters were poorly developed and there wasn’t much to like about any of them.

Overall Stardust was a disappointing read. I personally don’t like to write negative reviews, especially after I enjoyed The Graveyard Book so much. I wish the story was written better because it could have gone places and sadly it didn’t quite reach it’s peak. This is just my opinion though, I know many people have enjoyed this book and would recommend it. It just wasn’t for me.

My Rating: 1/5

Would I recommend it? No, especially not as a first Gaiman read.