The movie Stardust is the SF/Fantasy Movie Club watch pick this week. So I pulled Stardust the book off my library shelf for a quick re-read. Based on the edition, my original read appears to have been in 2003, the year I got married. I recall liking the book, but not in any BIG way. Just a nice story.
Seventeen years later I like it a lot better.
Stardust is for those who want a Faerie story (not fairy, please note) whose themes run deeper than right and wrong. This tale gets to the very nature of people and rules. Faerie folk live by entirely different laws than humans, so they cannot be judged by ours, just as (thank heaven!) we should not be judged by theirs.
The book follows Tristran Thorn as he travels through Faerie on a quest for his heart’s desire. This is a coming of age story, an adventure story, and a story full of sparkling fantasy. However, it is also grounded in what true love means when it happens on each side of Walls that divide cultures and societies.
Even as it tells hard fables about important things, it is easy to read. A rollicking young thing of a book, sowing wild ideas in the mind about how we can learn to live with–and love–those who are as unlike us as the fey.
Watching the movie is up next, and if I recall correctly, while the movie goes some way toward capturing the book’s intentions, as usual, the text and movie are not really the same at all. Not in story, characters, plot, or world. Mostly only in name.
We’ll see if my memory is correct that the movie is the darker and bleaker of the two. It holds a special place in my heart, as a Michelle Pfeiffer fan, though I recall not liking it very much when it was released in 2007.
What do you think?