This story is quite different from your usual book about magic heroes. It's more of a tour around the main points of magic stories, the past, the future, some magicians and the land of the faeries. This is by no means my favourite of Gaiman's works but it is really worth reading and somewhat surprising, it has almost nothing to do with what I expected it to be, and that was good. The artwork is great, I'd give it the 5 stars.I should say that I read this too quickly and probably not in the best time to enjoy it. In other reviews some readers suggest the book for Sandman fans, saying that you will enjoy this much more after reading Sandman. So I thought I should state here that I never read Sandman, though I plan on doing so eventually. I might read The Books of Magic again after that.