Stardust   by Neil Gaiman

Simple, friendly fairy tale despite that there is much death and wanton destruction involved.

Nice and readable, with low re-read factor only because I’d personally rather spend time reading less fanciful work. Very graphic and scene-by-scene, like a prose description of a graphic novel: the author’s original talent.

In Victorian times (hence no technology to get in the way of the story), an isolated English village has a notorious wall separating it, via a traversible gap, from a forbidden, magical faerie land.

A man promises a young lady to retrieve a fallen star in return for her hand in marriage, and goes off on a solo quest, in the faerie land, of course. The star turns out to be another young lady, and they have a turbulent relationship but eventually enjoy their time together in the return leg of the quest.

The work in fact is almost epic, with the young man being born after an adventure and faerie-land liaison involving his father. The story covers the entirety of the man’s life, and then events after his death. The fallen star, which has great longevity, ends up ruling the faerie land after all the other characters have either been killed or died naturally. The ending in fact is very tidy.