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Prince Humperdinck of Florin, an adept hunter but terrible human being, wants to start a war with the neighboring, equally tiny, kingdom of Guilder. To this end he schemes to marry a beautiful peasant lass named Buttercup, market her as Florin’s sweetheart, have her assassinated, and frame Guilder. In these machinations he is assisted by Count Rugen, a sadist obsessed with measuring pain.

A trio of mercenaries—Vizzini the delusional windbag “dizzying intellect�� from Sicily, Iñigo the master Spanish swordsman, and Fezzik the giant Turkish wrestler—are recruited to stage Buttercup’s abduction and dispose of her in the general neighborhood of Guilder. But as they traverse the Cliffs of Insanity, they are pursued by the Dread Pirate Roberts, a black-clad masked man whom no giant fist, well-wielded blade, or pompous brilliant mind can stop.

Why is Buttercup so important to Roberts? Is he connected to Westley, Buttercup’s farm-boy sweetheart who sailed away years ago to seek his fortune?



William Goldman’s novel, which satirizes old-fashioned swashbucklers and merrily bulldozes the fourth wall every other page, was published in 1975, but largely overshadowed by the 1987 film adaptation, wherein Goldman wrote the screenplay of his own novel. A central conceit of the story is that Goldman’s work is a mere abridged version of a longwinded epic by the fictitious S. Morgenstern. The layers of meta-commentary can feel a bit stifling; luckily the film dispenses with Goldman’s “scholarly�� digressions, using a grandpa reading to his grandson as a framing device instead.

The book is not quite as family-friendly as the movie. In one of the many forewords—this book has as many forewords as The Return of the King had endings—Goldman finds himself chatting up a bikini-clad woman one-third his age while he’s supposed to be buying his young son a birthday present (both the woman and the son are fictional).

Then in the epilogue, “Buttercup’s Baby,�� we see Buttercup teasing Westley into bed with her. It’s not graphic or salacious at all—quite tame by adult fiction standards, and substantially less horny than many a modern YA—but stuff like this is intrusive and weird when you remember that people show the movie to six-year-olds.



Finally, while I thoroughly enjoyed Goldman’s asides at first, they can seriously disrupt the story’s flow at some points and become a chore to slog through. The multiple forwards are too long, especially combined. The Hollywood secrets and Morgenstern gags are hilarious in moderation, but I think he overused them.

The funniest material by far is in the story proper, almost all of which made it into the film:





"True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everyone knows that" ~Miracle Max (GIF unavailable)

Also, Buttercup’s horse is named Horse. Goldman tells us she wasn’t very creative.

The book I recommend for people who love the movie and are very patient.

The movie I recommend for everyone. The jokes work beautifully on screen, and every character is perfectly cast. Watch it today!