Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess

[meganbmoore]

Stardust is a ballad about the realm of Faerie, in prose and illustrated form.  In it, a young man named Tristan Thorn swears to bring a fallen star to the girl he loves.  Tristan lives in the town of Wall, which exists on the border between Faerie and our world, and the people of Wall guard the hole in the wall that can be used to cross between the two worlds. 

Once every nine years, there is a market day where the people of Faerie sell their wares to the people of our world, but if you aren't careful, you can fall under their spell.  Eighteen years ago(though closer to seventeen and a half at the start of the tale) Tristan's father, Dunstan, fell under the spell of a faerie market girl and nine months later, after Dunstan had wed his sweetheart, Tristan was left at his door.  Tristan grows up to love a beautiful local girl named Victoria.  On a night when a star falls from the sky, Tristan asks her to marry him and Victoria tells him that she'll grant him any desire he wishes if he'll bring the star to her.

So Tristan passes through the hole in the wall and into his mother's realm to search for the star, and after a short series of adventures, he finds the star in the form of an unhappy young woman, who was knocked from the sky by an amulet thrown by the Lord of Stormhold and broke her leg when she landed.  Tristan is not the only one looking for the star.  There's also a trio of witches as old as time who eat the hearts of stars to regain their youth, and the youngest of the three sets out to acquire their new source of youth, and then there's the sons of the Lord of Stormhold.  At Stormhold, fratricide, not order of birth, determines the heir, but the throne cannot be claimed until the amulet is regained.

The novelization of Stardust was actually the first thing of Gaiman's that I read, and while I liked it a lot, something about it felt "off," which made sense when I learned that it was adapted from a graphic novel a few years later.  Gaiman is at his best when writing stories about stories, or stories that border on that and follow tradirional paths, and this is the perfect example of that.  The art is by Charles Vess and thus gorgeous, though not necessarily conventionally so.  BTW,

 

Now to find out soon how badly the movie can mess it up, as they seem to be approaching it from a "fractured fairy tale" standpoint, which is very far from what it is.

alexandral, Vess is one of the two artists the artist you posted the picspam of recently reminds me of.

Comments

[aoimidori.livejournal.com]

Now to find out soon how badly the movie can mess it up
I saw the trailer, and I wasn't really too fond of it. So now I refuse to hope for anything big. *shrugs*

[drealkulit.livejournal.com]

Did you know Stardust is one of my favorite Gaiman books? Just your random kulit fact for the day. ;)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

it is one of the best, esp. now that i've read it in the form it was originally intended to be read in.

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

Neil has written in his blog that most of the trailers are quite misleading and focus on different parts of the movie than he thought the movie focused on. I have hope!


. . . of it not being as bad an adaptation as LXG.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

LXG i can live with as the "screw it up" part was making it a period scifi action piece. Stardust, however, looks like it'll be a post-modern "intelligent" fractured fairy tale, which(aside from the intelligent part) is the opposite of what it should be. LXG had a certain "so bad its good" charm to it, but Stardust has the potential to "smart" itself to unwatchability.

Besides, Catwoman tops LXG in the "bad adaptation" category.

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

I felt that LXG had more severe screwups with regard to characterization. Especially what they did to Mina.

And I've never seen Catwoman.

But remember -- Neil is actually involved with the making of Stardust! There is creative input! It might actually not suck!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

well, part of the reason LXG had no creative inpuut is that as far as moore is concerned, the format he published his work in is the only format they should be in. (which makes sense, and most of his works would be impossible to faithfully translate)

But yes, they screwed up on Mina.

Catwoman have have seen about half of in bits. It was painful.

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

But still . . . except for Peta Wilson (who, from everything I saw, was doing her best with the script she was given -- she even dyed her hair!), and a few people involved in wardrobe and set design, no one even tried.