Currently Reading: Stardust
In college, we were required to live on campus all 4 years. It was amazing. Our tv service came through the school and we had a "movie channel". No, not HBO or Showtime, but essentially a public access channel that rotated 4 movies for 2 weeks at a time. The movie picks seemed completely random and to this day, I'm curious about who chose them.
Anyway, one of those movies during my senior year was "Stardust". With the whole "it's on every 4th movie for 2 weeks" system, I watched bits and pieces of it and sort of put together in my mind what it was about (Sidenote: this also reminds me of the time my mom and I watched "Constantine" with no sound and tried to figure out what was happening. Later we watched it with sound and realized that our synopsis was waaaaay off.).
I started reading Neil Gaiman lately and discovered that he had actually written the book Stardust that the movie was based on. Most of what I've read of his has been dark and witty. This is completely different. It's very Old English, fairy story.
Tristran has grown up in a small village next to a large meadow. The wall to the meadow is never crossed, except when the fair comes to the meadow, bringing with it all sorts of wonderful treasures and exotic characters. When Tristran is attempting to woo his love, Victoria, she tells him that if he brings her back the falling star that just landed beyond the wall, she will give him whatever he desires.
Going against everything he has ever known, Tristran passes the wall and enters the meadow and the unknown lands beyond it, in search of the fallen star. Along the way he meets many creatures, some helpful and some harmful, all while learning about his own mysterious past, which is not at all what he thought it was.
The book is fun, it's easy, and it's a quick read. Tristran is something of a knight character, rescuing damsels in distress and fighting off witches and their spells. It is romantic in a way that not many contemporary novels are. There's an innocence to it that is refreshing. But it is certainly not the typical Neil Gaiman.
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