Reviews with content warning for War - The Princess Bride

the story itself: 5 stars, no question. I adore the story and I love that the film followed it so closely (the dialogue is practically verbatim with a few exceptions. I loved actually hearing the characters). I liked reading more about inigo (my favorite character!) and fezzik’s backgrounds, but I wish there were similar backstories for buttercup and westley.

I like fourth-wall breaks and humor in books but what I can’t stand is arrogance. I understand the whole joke and everything but goldman comes off extremely arrogant (whether or not it’s a joke, it’s so annoying. it’s not a trait I enjoy even comedically) and it was so distracting. I was literally rolling my eyes every time.

aside from that I really liked the book… but I prefer the movie 🫣 the movie is just perfect and improved upon the text - I know there’s obvious bias there, since it’s been my favorite movie since childhood, but I really think not having as many interruptions so that the author can stroke his dick makes it objectively better.

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kelseyr713's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Second time I've read this, the first being sometime in high school so somewhere between 15-19 years ago.

The story of The Princess Bride itself is great. I think the movie version is even better, one of the rare cases this applies. The best subplots that don't make it to the movie are Fezzik's backstory and even more of Inigo's. The Zoo of Death is a little tedious.

I mostly like the commentary by Goldman, who is not himself in the book but rather another character. But I don’t understand why he portrays "himself" so unsympathetically and would appreciate more context into the parts where he talks about "his" life. Some of it is real, but he invents a different wife and a different child, among other things, and isn't nice to either of them. The asides during the book are mostly funny though, and every time Stephen King pops up is great. He clearly has a lot of thoughts on the abridgment process, and this is an interesting way to explore those.

I also think it's interesting that the overall theme of the book, which he overtly mentions a few times, is that life isn't fair. Subverting a lot of fairy tales and perhaps inserting some of his own outlook.

Content warnings: a lot of fatphobia, a homophobic slur, an ethnic slur towards a Spanish person.

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