I had a lot of fun with this book. It’s the basis of the cult-classic movie of the same name - the author of the book also wrote the screenplay. As a result, the action scenes and characters are nearly exactly the same, frame-for-frame. Considering how much fun the movie was, it’s little wonder that the book is similarly entertaining.

The book does add a considerable amount of meta-narrative, though. The author constructs a whole little fictional universe, set in late-twentieth century New York, surrounding the creation of the movie. The movie alludes to this meta-narrative, but only thinly. The book’s version is a good deal more elaborate and convincing - I actually didn’t recognize it as fiction until I dug around a little. In any case, that meta-narrative creates an interesting sort of atmosphere of mystery and romance around the book - it really does seem to be some kind of found novel - and gives adults an excuse to read what’s essentially juvenile fiction. Why it is that Goldman pretends to excise entire sections of the fictional original text is less than clear. Perhaps he’s trying to underline his philosophy that romance and adventure are more important than societal critique.

There’s not much to be said about the story itself, that isn’t already evident from the movie. One aspect which I did find a bit striking was the degree to which Westley emerges as a kind of Christ figure, complete with a series of absurd trials. Buttercup, in this telling, is considerably less feisty and independent than the character in the screenplay, and that’s quite a shame.

As adventure books go, this one lives up to its promise quite nicely, and is certainly a fun read.