Book review: "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman

(Hebrew) Oh, how much this book reminded me of the Russian fairy tales I was engorging when I was 10 years old. A handsome prince goes on a brave adventure into an enchanted kingdom, after promising his love to bring her a fallen star, and on his way makes friends with magical creatures, joins mighty knights, fights witches and rides on a unicorn. And the end, of course, is heart-warming. Now, I didn't mean this paragraph to sound cynical. I didn't. Really. It's actually quite a nice book, fun and entertaining to read. A kind of fairy tale, peppered with some adult humor, and up to date with the latest terms from the Western fantasy genre. So, if you're into fantasy and/or fairy tales, "Stardust" can be a good choice. As for me, there's just something in my head that doesn't connect with books of this kind. I'm not a big fan of fiction in general, and even less of science fiction and fantasy. There's only a small proportion of books from this genre I read and liked. I can link this to other traits of my personality - the over-rationality, the reductionism, and the insatiable strive for learning (which explains why I generally prefer non-fiction to fiction). I guess this book joins this selected group, because I actually liked reading it, but it doesn't encourage me to read more books of this kind. As a footnote, I must once again complain on the bad quality of the Hebrew translation. Unfortunately, there appear to be very few good translators to Hebrew, and this book wasn't assigned to the best of them... So if you plan to read it, make sure to grab the English version.