One of my personal classics!

I can never get enough of Neil Gaiman books and this is one of my absolute favorites. I hosted a book club and chose this as my title, and one of the things my group really loved about it was how it’s clearly a fantasy novel but not one too overwhelming for those who are new to the genre. Many of the women in my group assumed all fantasy was similar to Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings and were intimidated to pick up a fantasy, but the illustrative writing style and creative characters in Stardust completely won them over. They’re not series readers, nor do they enjoy books that are overly long and convoluted, so this was a perfect introductory choice for them.

Stardust is part fantasy, part coming of age story and is 100% enjoyable purely for the characters alone. I am a big fan of stories in which many, many characters come together to tell the tale, so including the Seven Brothers, the Witches, and all the other minor characters kept me invested in the entire book rather than just interested in our main love story. Gaiman is a master at crafting odd but enjoyable characters that never feel too over the top or quirky for the sake of being quirky. His writing style is very illustrative and I imagined myself in all of the settings he writes about. The story is a great adult recreation of the classic fairy tales we read as children but set in a world where we would all love to live. The movie adaptation of this is fun too but clearly adapted for film. They change quite a lot, but the movie being different doesn’t bother me in the slightest as a lot of this book would be pretty hard to adapt to and would probably be very polarizing to the general public.

You’ll be hard-pressed to get me to dislike a Gaiman book as he’s my favorite author in the world right now, and this is one of his more accessible works I think. I also like how there is clear romance in this book but it’s not over the top sappiness. Love is a theme throughout, but there are different types of love in this which I really love, not just the purely boy meets girl romance of Tristran and The Star. Overall I just love this book. It’s the perfect way to escape reality and daydream for a while and I highly recommend it.

Title: Stardust
Author: Neil Gaiman
Format: Paperback/Audiobook
Pages: 250
ISBN:  9780061142024

Three Descriptors: Lyrical, Romantic, Well-Developed

Read Alikes:
The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle
Peter & Max by Bill Willingham
Other Kingdoms by Richard Matheson
The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Edward Dunsany
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden