The short review: STARDUST is more like "moonshine," in the sense of its lack of substance.
I don't think I have a problem with a creator of genius simply tackling less ambitious projects. That's the nature of creativity: one is drawn to this or that endeavor by some internal muse, and there's no gainsaying that imperative.
That said, even in 1999 STARDUST feels like a very minor effort, particularly when it's compared to the section of BOOKS OF MAGIC that Gaiman completed. partly in collaboration with STARDUST-illustrator Charles Vess, about eight years previous. Though the subtitle styles STARDUST a "romance," the novel is centered on its male protagonist, around whom various female presences revolve.
A prologue describes how the novel's hero Tristran Thorn is conceived by a unison between his mortal father Dunstan and his faerie mother Una. This is possible because Wall, the English village Dunstan occupies, is separated by a literal brick wall from the dominions of Faerieland, which are represented by a loose association of entities. Some of these beings are almost indistinguishable from mortal people, like the royal family of Stormhold, while others include more overt fantasy-figures like witches and unicorns.
Tristran grows up in Wall, having no knowledge of his Faerie parentage, and falls in love with Victoria, a mortal girl. He pledges to undertake all manner of tasks to please his lady love, and when the two of them witness the falling of a star from the heavens, Victoria playfully suggests that he bring her the star. But to do that, Tristran must venture into the lands of Faerieland. And among the many magical entities he meets is "the star" herself in human form, eventually given the name Yvain. Additionally, there's a witch who wants to eat Yvain's heart to gain immortality, while the sons of the Stormhold kingdom are set a task that will end with one of them gaining their late father's throne, and this task too loosely coheres with finding the star.
All of these are perfectly respectable fantasy-tropes-- a cannibal witch, rival brothers seeking to complete a task, a love affair between a mortal male and a supernatural female. But STARDUST never escapes a mannered quality that may be Gaiman's worst creative failing.
Some complaints are minor. Gaiman burns up a lot of space describing how Yvain, once she became a living yet immortal woman, broke her leg falling from the sky. Okay, but if you're going to go with that idea, why just her leg? Why didn't she break her neck or back? Because Gaiman had to keep Tristran's destined real romantic partner alive, of course, but the constant reminder of the broken leg serves no actual purpose in the narrative.
The major problem is that the romantic byplay between Tristran and Yvaine seems tepid rather than intriguing. Though Tristran had nothing to do with Yvaine's fall, she constantly rags on him, just for having come to capture her, when he didn't even have any way of knowing she would be a sentient creature. The literary woods are full of acrimonious romances that turn out okay, but the acrimony needs to be rooted in some natural male-female conflict.
Moreover, Tristran only has one or two moments where he distinguishes himself with some act of wit in order to escape trouble. Most of the time, various magical donors show up to solve problems for Tristran and his stellar companion-- so many that Tristran never assumes any stature of his own. Further, the subplot with the royal brothers never ties into the main plot in any meaningful way, and the threat of the cannibal witch simply peters out at the end.
Despite an adult level of sexuality and violence in a few scenes, STARDUST feels like it should have been written more like a modern upbeat fairy tale, in which the good people suffer a little at first but end up having an uncomplicated happy ending. As for Vess, his art is technically proficient but he's illustrating a fantasy without much depth, and that undermines the potential mythopoesis.
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