Book #36: Stardust by Neil Gaiman

I feel stupid, but for some reason it had never occurred to me that the movie Stardust was based on a book by Neil Gaiman. I loved that movie, and thought it was so creative and fun, so when I found out it was a book I knew I had to check it out. Tristran Thorn enters the magical world of Faerie in a quest to find a fallen star for the girl he loves, and in the process of bringing back the star he had lots of adventures, meets lots of magical people, and runs into lots of danger. The movie actually follows the plot of the book pretty closely, so it was easy to keep track of what was going on--but I wonder if I wasn't familiar with the movie if I would have been confused at all with everything that went on. The book was actually surprisingly short with not all that much detail in a lot of the scenes or in describing the characters--which might be more a part of the style of fantasy writing instead of the modern fiction I'm more familiar with--although it did give a lot more backstory at the beginning than the movie does. But it was a lot of fun reading about the adventures of Tristran and Yvaine (the star), and it went very quickly. Anyone who likes the movie would enjoy reading this book.