Rating: 3 stars

I started The Princess Bride almost 100% because of Sanderson's first Secret Project - Tress of the Emerald Sea. (The other small part of the reason why was because the movie was on NZ Netflix and I had a night spare so I was going to watch it... which I didn't.) I planned to get this book over and done with in a day, if not one sitting. Safe to say, that did not happen. It was due to some really annoying thing that is ultimately trivial which I will not talk about because my irrational gripes with inanimate objects do not need to be made public. I guess what also surprised me and contributed to me not finishing as soon as I initially thought was how long the book went on. I thought it was short! Nope. This was 500+ pages! That's a pretty chunky boy.

Now I'm just going to quote stuff.

I finally understand! The quote, the famous quote: "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die." I get it now! I know what it means!


Then we have this absolute word vomit paragraph:

What happens here that you aren't going to read is the six-page soliloquy from Inigo in which Morgenstern, through Inigo, reflects on the anguish of fleeting glory. The reason for the soliloquy here is that Morgenstern's previous book had gotten bombed by the critics and also hadn't sold beans. (Aside - did you know that Robert Browning's first book of poems didn't sell one copy? True. Even his mother didn't buy it at her local bookstore. Have you ever heard anything more humiliating? How would you like to have been Browning and it's your first book and you have these secret hopes that now, now, you'll be somebody. Established, Important. And you give it a week before you ask the publisher how things are going, because you don't want to seem pushy or anything. And then maybe you drop by, and it was probably all very English and understated in those days, and you're Browning and you chitchat around a bit, before you drop the biggie: 'Oh, by the way, any notions yet on how my poems might be doing?' And then his editor, who has been dreading this moment, probably says, 'Well, you know how it is with poetry these days; nothing's taking off like it used to, requires a bit of time for the word to get around.' And then finally, somebody had to say it. 'None, Bob. Sorry, Bob, no, we haven't yet had one authenticated sale. We thought for a bit that Hatchards had a potential buyer down by Piccadilly, but it didn't quite work out. Sorry, Bob; of course we'll keep you posted in the event of a break-through.' End of Aside.)
Anyway, Inigo finishes his speech to the Cliffs and spends the next few hours finding a fisherman who sails him back to Florin City.

This feels/reads like some rambling I would do. I think I have met my match when it comes to tangents.

" 'You are wonderful, Father.'
'I'm more wonderful than wonderful, how dare you insult me.' ”

I swear this feels like Terry Pratchett/Douglas Adams humour, and yet William Goldman is American! I'm not saying Americans can't be funny, but there is a particular brand of British humour that The Princess Bride just slots into perfectly, and yet its author is it not English.

"Nothing can save me, Buttercup realised. I'm a dead cookie."

I mean, come on! That reads like something straight out of a Discworld book, doesn't it?

And now we have the best line in the entire book:

" 'Sonny, don't you tell me what's worth while - true love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everybody knows that.' "

Yes. I plan to quote this on a daily basis.