Stardust: The Gift Edition

I first read Stardust years ago in a cheap, paperback edition, and it is a great story. A few months ago, I was offered the opportunity to get a review copy of Stardust: The Gift Edition, which is a brand new hardcover edition of Neil Gaiman's classic tale. Naturally, I jumped on the opportunity as you can probably tell since I'm reviewing it.

For those who aren't familiar with the story, Stardust is a fairy tale for adults. The story starts off with the tale of Dunstan Thorn and how he fell in love with an imprisoned fairy princess and had a child named Tristran with her. Many years later, this child, now a young man, heads off into Fairy to find a fallen star after making a foolish promise to a young woman. While there, he has a bunch of adventures that would take far too long to explain in detail. It's a cool story that's well worth reading.

You may wonder what it is about the Gift Edition that's so special. Well, like I already said, it a hardcover. In fact, it's a very nice looking hardcover. The cover looks a lot like the sort of covers they had back before the invention of dust jackets. It's just the image of a falling star with the title and the author's name that has been (I assume) stamped on with some sort of goldish-looking foil. It's very classy, and if you want a nice looking copy to sit on your shelf, this is the one for you.

Besides that, it has some cool extras. There's a new introduction by Gaiman. There's an excerpt of an unfinished novel that Stardust was originally going to be a sort of prequel to. There are also some new illustrations by Charles Vess. All of this makes it a great book to by if you love Stardust, don't have the original heavily-illustrated DC comics version, and want an illustrated copy (or want to read the extras).