Like Sandman: The Dream Hunters, Neil Gaiman's Stardust is an illustrated novel. But unlike The Dream Hunters, Stardust contains a much meatier story with more evocative illustrations by the talented Charles Vess.

The story of Stardust is a fairy tale in both meanings of the phrase: the story takes place primarily in the realms of Faerie (as promised on the book cover), and the story is told in a simple, sing-song style, with little attention paid to realism or cohesion. Gaiman does a fair job describing the land of Faerie, but due credit must be given to Vess's fantastic illustrations, which always seem to depict exactly the scene that most needs depicting.

As for Gaiman's style, well, the benefit of his writing style is that he can throw together his trademark hodgepodge of myths and legends, along with a good deal of his own invention, without needing to give too much explanation, and he can easily incorporate violence without overly jolting the reader. On the other hand, a fairy tale is never really about deep emotions, and much is taken for granted (true love in particular), so it is difficult to feel too involved with the characters or the plot.

It's a good plot though, filled with strange new locales and bizarre characters, but it has two serious problems. First, Gaiman's writing style, which has always been deliberately ornate, seems unusually empty here--his lofty syntax and elevated sentence structure just don't seem to have much purpose. Second, a sudden revelation in the end--sudden even by the standards of fairy tales--seems like a serious cop-out and marred an otherwise perfectly fine conclusion.

Stardust is never really that gripping, but, despite its flaws, it is pleasant enough to merit a read.

Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu