The Princess Bride: Review

This can be considered a review/summary of sorts, so there may be spoilers, read at your own discretion.        

The princess bride- Buttercup with her mysterious man

 For the longest time, I’ve wanted to read The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I don’t remember how I learned about its existence, but the title, the fairytalesque synopsis, and it being a story about a beautiful maiden and an evil prince were enough to draw me in. I found out the book also had a movie adaptation, but I wanted to read the book first. That’s just me, I always choose the book over the movie, when both exist, I feel I can immerse myself in the story better that way. So I began searching my local bookstores for a copy and was disappointed that none of them had it and I was at it for months, before finally ordering it online. It took 20 days to arrive. Now Imagine my surprise when I finally start the book introduction and turns out, I ended up getting the “abridged” version and the original author was someone called "S. Morgenstern". Preposterous! I was miffed, I did not just spend all that money to end up with anything but the original! So I googled "S. Morgenstern" and spoiler alert, he doesn’t even exist! He was someone made up by the cheeky William Goldman as the writer of a book within this book which was read to the book Goldman by his father. Goldman, later wanting his son to read his favorite book, gives it as a present for his birthday, expecting him to love it as much as he did. To Goldman's disappointment, his son barely makes it past 1 chapter before he drops it, which leads him to wonder why. So he, who has only had the story ever read to him but not read it himself, finally reads and finds out that the book has a lot of boring text on “Florin”ese (the place where the book takes place is called Florin) history, hundreds and hundreds of pages of it and his father only read him the "good parts". So, he sets about abridging the book into a "good parts version" for his son to read it.                      

 As the story starts in full swing, we are introduced to Buttercup, one of the most beautiful women in the world who falls in love with the handsome farm boy Wesley. We get the love confession but it’s over before it can even start, as Wesley sets out to America to make a fortune and promises Buttercup to return in a few years. But soon the news of Wesley’s death reaches Buttercup. Heartbroken, Buttercup vows to never love again. Enter Prince Humperdinck, a barrel-shaped fellow who likes to hunt so much so that he had his own underground private zoo called the Zoo of Death, with 5 levels, each with different creatures, lions, alligators, snakes, spiders, you name it. As the king is on his deathbed, the prince must prepare for the succession and marry to secure an heir to the throne. So he searches for bride candidates and decides it only fitting that he marry the most beautiful woman, none other than Buttercup, threatening her to marry him or die. As Buttercup has no reason or way to refuse their wedding preparations begin.

 Soon things take a turn for worse or better and Buttercup gets kidnapped to be killed. But to her luck, she gets saved by a mysterious man in black. This is the part with the high adventure, so I won’t divulge who the man in black is, if you haven’t already guessed or watched the movie, then maybe it’s a sign for you to pick up the book! Once again Humperdink catches up to them and takes Buttercup back with him and tortures the mysterious man. Now, does this story have a happy ending? Well, it is a fairytale of sorts, so I will spoil that- it ends well, sort of anyway.                                

 The whole book is littered with Goldman’s commentary on why he skips over parts of the “original” which talks about the “boring” stuff like the history or culture of Florin and the like, which is hilarious. Overall, I think this book has everything one would want-fairytale, romance, adventure, drama, kidnapping, the great chase, mystery all told with a humorous undertone, and tied together by an unreliable narrator. I thoroughly enjoyed reading every bit of this book and laughed a lot. Now I have to watch the movie sometime and see if it lives up to the book.

My rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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