The story is a well rounded plunge into a world on the other side of the Wall into the land of Faire and Stormhold. There are evil witches who pursue a young beautiful fallen star to obtain a live beating heart to retain their youth. A set of brothers intent on gaining the throne through any means necessary even to the extent of fratricide. Lightning harvesting pirates who sail through the skies on a flying ship. And in the middle of it all a young man who is born of both worlds who is thrust into the midst of it all, with no higher intent then winning the heart of his school boy crush. The interaction between the characters is entirely believable which sometimes belies the wondrously unbelievable world in which most of the story is placed.
The story reads very much like a classic fairytale with the young handsome man, protecting the lovely damsel in distress, only the damsel is a star that was knocked out of the sky by a flying pendant and the young man is only protecting her to take her back as a present to his supposed true love. There are multiple villains, giving you plenty of people to root against, which is great until they fight each other and then your not quit sure who's side your on! I think my favorite part though is the flying pirates who give our intrepid pair a place to rest, learn and heal. This is but a bare surface scraping of the wonderful depth that this little tale hides. And of course like all good fairy tales they all mostly live happily ever after.
Neil Gaiman does an excellent job in keeping a surrealistic, eccentric, slightly out of control feel, while still maintaining the idea of traditional story telling. Charles Vess takes an already wonderful story and turns it into something amazing with his illustrations highlighting the story without overwhelming it. If you are looking for a good book to help you escape for a little while this is the one you are looking for.
There is also a movie that is excellent, they stray from the book for sure, but all in all I love it. The acting is great, and the story is mostly altered to fit a movie format as the book is not entirely filmable. Watching the movie still gives you the essence of the book, which to me is the best part. I would highly recommend the movie as well as the book
What do you think, are fairy picture books only for little kids, or is a grown up version just the thing sometimes. Do you love the originalness as much as I do? Who do you like to read to escape for a little while?
No comments:
Post a Comment