Review: Stardust

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There’s something deeply satisfying about a fairytale done right. At its best, it feels like a challenge to the imagination to understand that, even in a world of pure imagination (or perhaps especially so) there are still rules. Characters don’t get full-on happy endings, or at least not the happy endings they imagine. They run risks, learn things, and, even as they generally return home, they’re changed.

If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider that the Russian formalists – literary critics from the early middle 20th century – developed major strands of formal narrative theory by studying the ways fairy tales established and then played with expectations in their plots.

In any case, Gaiman is straightforward (in the interview appended here) that he wanted to explore fairy stories with this book, and – at least as far as I’m concerned after reading more than a dozen of his books (counting each Sandman volume as a separate book, that is) I think this is probably his best work.

I get tired of Gaiman when he’s trying to show me how smart he is, how his contemporary vision is rooted in mythologies of earlier ages. Here, though, he’s unfettered his imagination, or, more properly, fettered it only to the deep logic and rhythm of once upon a time.

Our central quest here is deeply satisfying as Tristran goes in search of a fallen star only to discover that it’s taken on human form. I really enjoy their interplay, and I appreciated the cleverness throughout – in particular the idea that the star has broken her legs in falling.

But that’s only the start of it. I find the parallel stories satisfying as well. There’s the story of the succession of the Storm King, where, in a deeply creative move, Gaiman has each of the seven sons compelled to kill his siblings and then has the ghosts of the dead siblings stand as a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the activity. There’s the minor witch who has kidnapped the Storm King’s only daughter and turned her into a bird and fairy flea market sales girl. There’s the queen of the witches who seeks to eat the heart of the star in order to restore her youth. And then there are all sorts of intriguing characters who cross paths with our heroes, my favorites being a gnomish packer/trader and a crew of sky sailors who make a living fishing for lightning from the clouds.

In other words all the elements are here. And then Gaiman weaves them all together into a connected story that stays true to its own implicit logic.

If that weren’t all enough, I love the end where [SPOILER] it makes perfect sense that, as the star falls in love with Tristran – as she gives her heart to him – the Witch Queen’s plan to eat that heart is thwarted; it’s no longer the heart of a star but rather a heart given to a young man who’s proved himself worthy.

Anyway, I’m less a Gaiman fan than most I know, but my hat’s off to him with this one. It’s innocent and inventive, taking us on a quest that’s always surprising yet also, even more impressively, in accord with the deeper laws of fairy.


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