Stardust

This fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman is something like The Princess Bride without the mocking flavour of that particular book (although like TPB, the film of Stardust is more tightly structured and therefore slightly better). Tristan Thorne is asked by a girl he’s keen on to go catch a falling star – and so he crosses the Wall into fairy-land and discovers that over there, stars are girls and magic is real. It’s a fun, clever, and well-written fairy tale, albeit with a rather modern American tone to it all. There’s the usual twists on the usual fairy stories, and some of the darkness of modern fantasy novels – an altogether good, if not deep or moving, read.