Neil Gaiman's fiction is a bit hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes he blows me away (e.g., American Gods), and other times (e.g., Anansi Boys), he's not that interesting. I saw the movie Stardust a few months before reading this book, and I liked the movie quite a lot. Happily, the book lives up to the movie, and Stardust is in the running for my favorite young-adult fantasy novel. And there are enough differences between the book and the movie to make it worthwhile to seek out both. Good stuff.