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| View Larger Image | Stardust | Paperbackby Neil Gaiman (Author)
| List Price: | $6.99 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | HarperTeen | | Page Count: | 288 Pages | | Publication Date: | January 01, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 2,667nd |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780061689246
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Catch a fallen star . . . Tristran thorn promised to bring back a fallen star. So he sets out on a journey to fulfill the request of his beloved, the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester—and stumbles into the enchanted realm that lies beyond the wall of his English country town. Rich with adventure and magic, Stardust is one of master storyteller Neil Gaiman's most beloved tales, and the inspiration for the hit movie. |
Amazon.com Review
Stardust is an utterly charming fairy tale in the tradition of The Princess Bride and The Neverending Story. Neil Gaiman, creator of the darkly elegant Sandman comics and author of The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, tells the story of young Tristran Thorn and his adventures in the land of Faerie. One fateful night, Tristran promises his beloved that he will retrieve a fallen star for her from beyond the Wall that stands between their rural English town (called, appropriately, Wall) and the Faerie realm. No one ever ventures beyond the Wall except to attend an enchanted flea market that is held every nine years (and during which, unbeknownst to him, Tristran was conceived). But Tristran bravely sets out to fetch the fallen star and thus win the hand of his love. His adventures in the magical land will keep you turning pages as fast as you can--he and the star escape evil old witches, deadly clutching trees, goblin press-gangs, and the scheming sons of the dead Lord of Stormhold. The story is by turns thrillingly scary and very funny. You'll love goofy, earnest Tristran and the talking animals, gnomes, magic trees, and other irresistible denizens of Faerie that he encounters in his travels. Stardust is a perfect read-aloud book, a brand-new fairy tale you'll want to share with a kid, or maybe hoard for yourself. (If you read it to kids, watch out for a couple of spicy sex bits and one epithet.) --Therese Littleton |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 393 reviews)
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Not Exactly Glittering Gold - Bronze Maybe by D. Parker (Philadelphia, PA)  4 Stars
November 21, 2009
What a marvelously visual novel.
Now listen, is this on par with the epic novel The Pillars of the Earth? No. But it's still very, very good.
At times I had to re-read sections to make sure I knew where certain characters were in the novel. For some reason, the placement of characters seemed a little inconsistent, but I'm nitpicking.
Gaiman is an excellent storyteller, and if you pay close attention you will be rewarded at the end of this quickly-paced novel with a great twist.
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Light Fare for an Afternoon Read by Joseph Devon (New York, NY) 4 Stars
November 17, 2009
I plowed through this book in the course of one lazy Sunday afternoon. This is both a plus and a minus in my mind. I truly enjoy the worlds that Gaiman creates and, with this the third book of his I've read, can consider myself a fan. Stardust doesn't fail in that regard as I was happily drawn in to the sometimes silly, sometimes scary, world which our hero must inhabit in order to retrieve a fallen star for his true love.
Simply put, the biggest problem I had with this book was that I wanted more. I wanted deeper character stories and more history and a longer plot. I felt like I was only allowed to dip my toes into a cool stream when, after some initial toe dipping, what I really wanted to do was strip naked, dive in, and swim and swim and swim in said cool stream. But all you get is the toe dip, and that is to be regretted and enjoyed at the same time.
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Charming adult fairy tale by R. Burnette (Grafton, NH)  5 Stars
October 14, 2009
Wonderfully read by the author, who easily could have been a successful audio book reader even if he did not write with such involvement. And his writing is involving, often engrossing, and his characters become friends we care for. I am stunned whenever some tragedy befalls one. As Mr. Gaiman said himself in his epilog, this tale is akin to Princess Bride, albeit more mature, and is awash with themes and plots of mythos quality.
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Looking To Introduce Yourself To Neil Gaiman? Start With One Of His Other Books...! by Wendell A. Betton (St. Louis, MO.)  3 Stars
October 04, 2009
Stardust was a bit of a departure from Neil Gaiman's expected writing style. Here we have Gaiman's fairy tale; one that is meant to hold the interest of adult readers. It definitely is not one meant for "children's bedtime storytelling".
Gaiman begins in the typical fairy tale fashion (but, thankfully without the hackneyed, "Once upon a time") explaining a fantasy land that is surrounded by a large stone wall (in fact, the village is called Wall) with only one opening with 2 guards. The people of the village are only allowed to leave through the guarded opening once every 9 years. This makes attentive readers wonder if Gaiman's intention is to relate this to some real-world political situation, but the story progresses in fairy-tale fashion and brings to light the fantastic quest which the main character, Tristran Thorn (the movie version calls him Tristan), must fulfill; as all fairy-tale main characters must.
There are a few mature themes hinted at in the story such as sex, interest in a girl that takes a somewhat typical twist by the story's end, very aggressive sibling rivalry among a group of brothers (of whom only some are alive, but they're all at each other's throats, ["hmmm"...?]). And there is an evil witch. It's very interesting how Gaiman used typical fairy-tale subjects, but used his gift of storytelling to make it all original and fanciful.
Overall, Gaiman still stirs up the readers' imagination in his common method as they trek through Stardust with Tristran, but since it's a fairy tale and since Gaiman chose to use some typical themes of that genre, this story seems like it would be more alluring to young readers or to readers more easily wowed by events and techniques less imaginative than what readers encountered in the much more mature "Neverwhere", "American Gods", and "Anansi Boys".
In my other reviews on Neil Gaiman I mentioned certain things he commonly referred to in all his stories, but he didn't delineate the history of a real-world location this time, nor does he have a long treatise on the tastes and smells of foods or a meal that I can remember this time around.
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Stardust 5 Stars
September 26, 2009
It begins on a fateful day at the city of Wall when young Tristran Thorn tells the cold-hearted Victoria that he would get anything at all for her if she grants him one wish. When Victoria asks for the falling star that they see together that night, Tristran takes off to retrieve it without a second thought. To do so, he must cross the Wall into the land of Faerie where anything is able to happen. As he goes across Faerie in search of the star he meets new people, things, and beings that where only in bedtime stories before.
However, Tristran isn't the only one looking for the star. A witch is hunting down the star in order to carve out it's heart and heirs to the dead Lord of Stormhold are also in search of the star. Tristran must use his skills, luck, and the passing help of others in order to survive.
This book is a book filled with unlikely twists, engaging characters, and a strong plot. It is impossible to let go and you are always left wondering what would happen next. The idea of Stardust itself is new and fresh. Neil Gaiman remembers to make each page a lively one. Not one sentence is useless. Stardust is beautiful work that takes readers to a new world with unimaginable things, dangers, and magic. Neil Gaiman has also written other books including: Coraline, The Sandman, or The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, this book would definitely be another to read.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Neverwhere: A Novel
by Neil Gaiman (Author)
Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinarylife, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.
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| Coraline Movie Tie-in Edition
by Neil Gaiman (Author), Dave Mckean (Illustrator)
When Coraline explores her new home, she steps through a door and into another house just like her own . . . except that it's different. It's a marvelous adventure until Coraline discovers that there's also another mother and another father in the house. They want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to keep her forever! Coraline must use all of her wits and every ounce of courage in order to save herself and return home.
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| Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman (Author)
Fat Charlie Nancy's normal life ended the moment his father dropped dead on a Florida karaoke stage. Charlie didn't know his dad was a god. And he never knew he had a brother. Now brother Spider's on his doorstep—about to make Fat Charlie's life more interesting . . . and a lot more dangerous.
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| American Gods: A Novel
by Neil Gaiman (Author)
Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, who knows more about Shadow than is possible, warns that a storm is coming -- a battle for the very soul of America . . . and they are in its direct path. One of the most talked-about books of the new millennium, American Gods is a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an American landscape at once eerily familiar and utterly...
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| The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman (Author), Dave Mckean (Illustrator)
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer. ...
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