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    Stardust: The Gift Edition
    Stardust: The Gift Edition
    Stardust: The Gift Edition
    Audiobook6 hours

    Stardust: The Gift Edition

    Written by Neil Gaiman

    Narrated by Neil Gaiman

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    This extended edition of Stardust includes a special introduction from the author as well as “Wall: A Prologue,” the prequel story from which Stardust was born.

    ""A twisting, wondrous tale full of magic that only Neil Gaiman could have written.""

    —Chicago Tribune

    ""Beautiful, memorable . . . A book full of marvels.""

    —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

    Among the wondrous, beautiful, and strange literary offspring conceived by Sandman creator, multi-award winner, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman (Anasi Boys, Neverwhere, American Gods, Coraline, The Graveyard Book), his magical 1997 fantasy novel, Stardust, remains a top favorite. An enchanting adult fairy tale about a young man who travels beyond the boundaries of his small village to find a fallen star and win the heart of the woman he loves—the basis for the hit motion picture starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller, Claire Danes, and Robert DeNiro—Gaiman's glorious fable is now available in a special keepsake edition. Here is a gift of Stardust—beautifully packaged, with a special new introduction by the author—that every Neil Gaiman devotee will want to receive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 30, 2012
    ISBN9780062237781
    Stardust: The Gift Edition
    Author

    Neil Gaiman

    Neil Gaiman is the celebrated author of books, graphic novels, short stories, films, and television for readers of all ages. Some of his most notable titles include the highly lauded #1 New York Times bestseller Norse Mythology; the groundbreaking and award-winning Sandman comic series; The Graveyard Book (the first book ever to win both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals); American Gods, winner of many awards and recently adapted into the Emmy-nominated Starz TV series (the second season slated to air in 2019); The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which was the UK’s National Book Award 2013 Book of the Year. Good Omens, which he wrote with Terry Pratchett a very long time ago (but not quite as long ago as Don’t Panic) and for which Gaiman wrote the screenplay, will air on Amazon and the BBC in 2019. Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan

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    Reviews for Stardust

    4/5

    7,310 ratings296 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      If nothing more than his writing, I absolutely enjoy listening to his voice. They are perfectly matched.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      My favorite so far of what I’ve read by this author. His way of writing makes me feel swept away just reading the words but having him read it to you in the audiobook is a double dose of magical.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      It just wasn't engaging enough to keep my attention. Decent story, the author is talented, but it was really pretty boring.
    • 4/5
      I really liked it but I had so trouble really getting into it for some reason.
    • 5/5
      I love this book! Tristan died in this book, but I didn't cry! His star lived past his death.

      I liked Tristan from the beginning, and followed his adventures with great interest. I also liked his star. I really didn't like Victoria.

      I read this book on October 4th, 2022. I thought Neil Gaiman did a fantastic job performing this story! I thoroughly enjoyed his narration.
    • 5/5
      Wonderfully written, fantastic tale. Best adult fairy tale I've read in a while.
    • 5/5
      This is a great story. The audiobook is very well read.
    • 5/5
      Fun reading, imaginative. Another wonderful book by Neil Gaimen!
    • 5/5
      This is indeed a fairy tale for adults. The book has large type and a quick prose that make it feel like a kids tale, and yet there are touches of violence and sexuality to push it back to the adult side. It's not gratuitous, but just enough that it actually feels more real. It's a fairy tale, but it's not completely sugarcoated, and I found that refreshing.
    • 4/5
      A fairy tale for grownups. Tristran Thorne sets out on a quest into the land of faerie to fetch a fallen star for his beloved. The star turns out to be a person and they have many adventures on their way back to our world. I really enjoyed this book. The ending wasn't such a surprise but the pleasure is more in the telling than in a great reveal. The writing style is very much like a children's book, with a sort of "gather round" feeling, but the story itself is a little darker and more satisfying for grownups.
    • 4/5
      A nearly perfect story. It takes you back to being a kid listening to an adult tell you a story, which I think Neil Gaiman was going for in this "adult fairy tale." Would definitely recommend the audiobook.

      4 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      As magical and well-written as anything Neil Gaiman writes. Beautiful prose and a wonderful story. Will not disappoint.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The audio is professionally done. The reader is the author, so there’s no wonder why he reads with perfect delivery. A wonderful reading of a good/great book.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Good fantasy novel. I read the regular novel, not the graphic version.
    • 4/5
      I listened to a full cast recording and it was genuinely excellent. Full of set pieces that are touching and funny by turns. Yes, there's a love story, but it doesn't get in the way of the rest of the adventure. While there were a lot of characters to keep straight, the voices were all sufficiently different that it was possible to identify who was speaking without too much intervention from the narrator. In this format there was little in the way of description, such that you can, in a sense, invent your own landscape for the most part and picture the characters yourself. As someone with no visual imagination, that's a drawback, so I wonder if in novel or graphic novel format I might get something different from this. As it was I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent in Faerie.
    • 3/5
      This begins with the story of an ordinary young man who wants to gain his Heart's Desire, spends some time at a mysterious market that only happens every nine years, and ends up accidentally fathering a son with the probably-not-human slave of a witch. When that son, Tristran, turns 17, he's head over heels in love with Victoria, the most beautiful girl in his town. She, not realizing he'd take it seriously, sets him an impossible task to win her heart: bring her back the star they both saw fall. And so begins Tristran's journey away from his ordinary village, into a world where witches, unicorns, and magic exist, and where fallen stars take the form of young women. Multiple characters' stories end up intertwined: a witch seeking the fallen star so that she can harvest her heart for its power to grant youth; several brothers competing for their late father's throne; and of course Tristran.I had previously read this book but remembered almost none of it - just that there was a young man traveling with a star who looked like a woman, and that they somehow fell in love. I also recalled not being very impressed by it.The beginning, with Tristran's father, was long enough that I initially mistook him for the book's protagonist. Thankfully he wasn't, although Tristran didn't appeal to me much more than his father did. Okay, so he was 17 and nursing his first big crush, but knowing that didn't make him less annoying. Besides, I had trouble remembering his age - he came across as a sort of generic "young and naive." I outright flinched when he found the fallen star and just sort of accepted that he'd have to chain her in order to bring her back to Victoria. He wasn't malicious so much as stupid, as evidenced by a later event involving the chain, but I definitely felt sympathy for the star for having to deal with him, and their eventual feelings for each other never rang true for me.I suppose feelings were never really the point - this was basically a fairy tale, and I did at least admire the way Gaiman wove all the various characters' stories together so neatly. It was a decent enough read, but it never engaged me enough to feel like a great one. It was just...okay.(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
    • 5/5
      Great story line, enjoyable characters. All in all a great read. And the movie they made out of it wasn't half bad.
    • 4/5
      A somewhat odd fairytale, but a good one.
    • 4/5

      This is the first time, I'd read Stardust. Usually I like to read the book then see the film if I liked the book. I almost always like the book better then the film. For some reason, I hadn't known the film was written by Gaiman or I'd have read it first. I really liked the movie, and now many years later when have finally read the book, and enjoyed the adult fairy tale very much. It's fairly short so the characters don't get a lot of development side from the main two, but that's alright a fairy tale is more about the story than the character development and the main character does indeed grow and change as he moves through the story.

      But someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again
      C.S. Lewis
    • 5/5
      An utterly charming adult fairy tale, magnificently read by Neil himself.Despite promises of smut in one negative review, nipples appear only once and briefly at that.
    • 4/5

      Short review: I loved it.

      Long review: Gaiman's skill at storytelling, the piece that makes his comics and books such a success, is his voice. I mentioned before that his book, "American Gods" was one I didn't like, but I respected him a lot as a writer. Stardust shows why. His tone and voice as a writer walk a very specific and wonderful line between humorous fantasy and serious realism. I liken it to the move "The Princess Bride". Everyone knows the movie is a comedy, but the tone treats its subject seriously... and that's the magic.

      Stardust is a romantic fantasy filled with unicorns, fallen stars, witches and princes. At the same time, it is a quirksome coming of age story. The writing is strong. The characters are interesting. The adventure isn't cliche or the same old expected fare. With all that going for it the real gem, as I said, is the voice.

    • 4/5
      adult fantasy fiction (magic, faery world, fairy tales)
      Count on Neil Gaiman for a great story. There is one love scene at the beginning, and some violence by/against unicorns, but this would also suit older teens.
    • 5/5
      A fun, entertaining, ridiculous portal fantasy story of a young man entering a magical world to catch a falling star. The story is great with many exciting characters. There is action, romance, magic, and character growth all in this short novel. It is a fantastic book that I highly recommend, especially for fans of Neil Gaiman.
    • 5/5
      I ADORED this book. It's a fairy tale that incorporates other fairy tales, and it was just lovely.
    • 3/5
      For an English teacher this is painful to admit, but I liked the movie better. The book lacked good pacing and the characters were somewhat blah. I couldn't figure out why the two main characters would fall in love except that they were supposed to. The movie also added a great deal of humor that was not in the book.
    • 4/5
      It's a bit hard to write this review because on the hand I adored it. But on the other hand there were aspects I didn't enjoy at all, so they sort of interrupted my reading pleasure. These were the use of modern language in specific situations, the sex scenes (I have nothing against sex scenes, but to me they didn't quite fit the story), and also some of the things that I suppose should be funny but that to me weren't in tune with the overall style. I should explain that I love high fantasy and I'm not drawn to "funny fantasy" (I have no intention to ever read Terry Pratchett, although so many people tell me I must do so). I love a realistic style in fantasy, the feeling that there could be a world just like that - which is why J.R.R. Tolkien is my most favourite writer.Gaiman's language is too artificial for my liking, and I had a hard time getting into the story and to let myself fall into this weird world of Faerie behind the wall.But here's the thing: Despite of these aspects that I didn't like, I really, really loved the story. There was a moment when I held my breath and thought: "This is Faerie!" - in Tolkien's sense of Faerie, the Faerie of Smith of Wootton Major, the place we all need to be healthy and to stay sane. And sure enough, on the next page it was mentioned for the first time: Behind the wall there is Faerie, and if you go there, you will not be the same when you come back. So throughout this story, Faerie weaves its wonderful web and catches you - and I think no novel ever gave me such a Tolkienesque feeling, although on the other hand the style is so far away from Tolkien.My edition contains two afterwords and the first chapter of a novel that was Gaiman's first idea about Wall, but that hasn't been written so far. My husband's edition contains an interview with Gaiman where he mentions Tolkien (referring, no doubt, to his lecture "On Faerie Stories") and explains that according to him, fairytales are not only for children, but for adults, too. It's an interesting interview about the history of fairytales, although I wish that it would have been longer, because I am curious to know more about Gaiman's influences. In the first afterword, he also mentions Tolkien's fellow inkling C.S. Lewis - and I am absolutely sure that if Gaiman had lived a few decades earlier, he would absolutely have been an inkling, too, and I think that's the highest honor I can give to any fantasy author!
    • 5/5
      This is perhaps my favorite of Gaiman's novels that I've read so far. Gaiman is a fantastic storyteller, and his descriptions are extraordinarily vivid.
    • 3/5
      An entertaining adventure with a few scary moments--very Gaiman. I do like American Gods far better.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed the film, but I think the book is more enchanting and has a lovely ending.
    • 5/5
      I’ve read the book, watched the movie, and now listened to the audiobook delightfully narrated by the author himself. Each effort is 5-star worthy. A whimsical, light-hearted, slightly dark, and imaginative journey into the heart of faery—in this instance from the border town of Wall—has never been presented in the way Neil Gaiman delivers a story to his readers. Highly visually descriptive without being overwhelming, Stardust is both a fun read for fans of fantasy and a portal for novices entering the genre for the first time to experience “the slow dance of the infinite stars.”