Kythe42
4/8/2014
The Princess Bride by William Goldman is a satirical romantic fairy tale. A young girl named Buttercup falls in love with the farm hand Westly. After she declares her love to him, Westly leaves to seek his fortune promising to send for her. When Buttercup receives news that Westly's ship was attacked by a pirate that is known to leave no survivors she is inconsolable. When the local prince learns of Buttercup's beauty he orders her to marry him or face death and seems not the least bit concerned that Buttercup will never love him. Shortly after the engagement Buttercup is kidnapped as part of a conspiracy to start a war.
I found the story a bit hard to get into at first but it picks up after the first couple of chapters. I would say that I didn't find the book to be quite as funny as the movie, but I think that's just because the actors really bring out the humor with the inflections of their voices and the way they say the lines. I found it really enjoyable though to read the background stories of some of the characters that they really don't go into in the movie. One thing about the book that's a little annoying is that the author as a narrator often interrupts the story and goes off on tangents. Some of it is amusing and often starts out as sort of relating to what is going on in the book, but tends to end up far off course before you return to the actual story. Overall I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who has seen the movie or anyone who enjoys humorous fairy tale like stories with plenty of action, adventure, and romance.
One final thing I want to mention is that there is no unabridged version of this book. No matter how much the author tells you that he abridged a story originally written by S. Morgenstern, don't believe him. This is merely a humorous plot device and there is no such person as S. Morgenstern(though the author has used it as a pseudonym in other works). Many details of the author's life in the introduction to this book are also completely fabricated.