So I ended up reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman, with a LOT of pages skipped in between. While the story starts off interesting, it was hard to be invested in the tale after the first few chapters. It’s about how a bunch of people are looking for a fallen star, all for different reasons. Our protagonist is looking for it because he foolishly promises the girl he loves that a fallen star won’t be hard to get.
While I first attributed my lack of enthusiasm to the fact that maybe fantasy-fiction is not my genre, a 1-star review for the book by a Goodreads reader who loves the genre made me realize I had the same problems with this book as them. Stardust is basically a children’s tale, but with adult elements, so there is a generous sprinkling of sex, violence and gore. It’s not like the book is meant for children, it’s supposedly target at adult fantasy-fiction readers and yet the plot is largely child-like, so the explicit scenes don’t blend well.
Stardust is basically an awkward mash of children-adult themes that ends up being a tedious read. You have evil witches, fairies, greedy kings and an innocent lovelorn protagonist at the middle of it all. Apparently the movie adaptation of the novel is a 100 times better, but after reading the book, I have very little interest in the film. It’s a 2/5 from me.