Stardust - Neil Gaiman

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fantasy Fiction
Form: Audio book

In the sleepy English countryside of decades past, there is a town that has stood on a jut of granite for six hundred years. And immediately to the east stands a high stone wall, for which the village is named. Here in the town of Wall, Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester. One crisp October night, as they watch, a star falls from the sky, and Victoria promises to marry Tristran if he'll retrieve that star and bring it back for her. It is this promise that sends Tristran through the only gap in the wall, across the meadow, and into the most unforgettable adventure of his life.

This is a very fun book that takes you into a world of many mythical creatures, some friends some foe, and magic is normal. The land of the Fairy. Tristran and the Star are a beautiful pair - that while you don't feel sparks when you think of them together like you would in a more "romance" based novel, you feel the bond of their friendship. The bond is much better than that of Tristran and Victoria, of which I think the only basis of the "love" he felt was due to her beauty. She seemed like an arrogant, prissy, little girl in my opinion. Although, by the end of the book you are happy for her.

I think I would have liked this book much better had I not ruined it by watching the movie first. I usually strictly follow the rule of read the book first, then watch the movie, but in this case the movie was loaned to me and I didn't know about the book until afterward. One thing I really like is the cover of this book. Since I rented the audio book from bookfree.com, I did not get the chance to view the cover - but when I pulled this up on Barnesandnoble.com and saw the cover I just though - oh how cute would this be if it were truly a book bound in red and had a star clasp like that. I would buy one just for the novelty of the cover.