Paperback, 432 pages
Deutsch language
Published July 18, 2016 by Klett-Cotta.
Paperback, 432 pages
Deutsch language
Published July 18, 2016 by Klett-Cotta.
»Die Brautprinzessin« ist ein raffiniertes Abenteuer und eine atemlose, clevere Romanze. Traurig und hinterlistig, verspielt, blutig und zeitlos. Wahnsinnig. Und wunderschön.
Erzählt wird die Geschichte der wunderschönen Butterblume und des Stalljungen Westley, der unsterblich in sie verliebt ist. Die Erzählung von der Bedrohung ihrer Liebe durch Prinz Humperdinck, seine Ritter und Spione ist aber nur eine Geschichte in einem atemberaubenden Spiel von Kürzungen und raunenden Kommentaren.
This is a romantic story about true love, fights and insidiousness, magic and wonder, staged in a ruritanian fantasy country somewhere in Europe.
I've read this book quite late in my live (and have not seen the film until now), so maybe some of the magic got lost in my immortal cynicism (this was written after I took the red pill).
Buttercup, a beauty living on a farm, finds her True Love in Winsley, the farm boy, who plans to go to America to succeed before he wants to come back - for her. And then Winsley is said to be killed by the dreaded Pirate Roberts. Buttercup - thinking that her loved is killed - surrenders to the courting of Prince Humperdinck. Before the marriage she gets kidnapped by Spanish fencing master Inigo Montoya, Fezzik the gigantic wrestler from Turkey and the smart Sicilian criminal Vezzini. But …
This is a romantic story about true love, fights and insidiousness, magic and wonder, staged in a ruritanian fantasy country somewhere in Europe.
I've read this book quite late in my live (and have not seen the film until now), so maybe some of the magic got lost in my immortal cynicism (this was written after I took the red pill).
Buttercup, a beauty living on a farm, finds her True Love in Winsley, the farm boy, who plans to go to America to succeed before he wants to come back - for her. And then Winsley is said to be killed by the dreaded Pirate Roberts. Buttercup - thinking that her loved is killed - surrenders to the courting of Prince Humperdinck. Before the marriage she gets kidnapped by Spanish fencing master Inigo Montoya, Fezzik the gigantic wrestler from Turkey and the smart Sicilian criminal Vezzini. But they get overwhelmed one by one by a mysterious man in black (this was before the science fiction comedy film of that name).
It is beyond question a damn prototype of a Damsel in Distress Book (this was before emancipation glanced Hollywood or after a bitter divorce). Buttercup is mostly subject, not object to kidnapping, murder and fights. Of course she is beautiful, devout and loving. One gets to like Inigo Montoya and Fezzik. The light told naive story lives from its exaggerations, its interspersed brackets with funny comments and of course of the frame narrative. The author tells us that the story was written by someone else and he only did the abridgment, since his father read "only the good parts" to him as child. He rants about his wife, makes fun of film making and book writing.
To my (later) edition there is also an attachment "Buttercups Baby" which is superfluous, it might have been the try to do start a second book which was not finished or whatever.
Key Sentence: "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die!"
My rating: Four of five stars (this is because of dormant damsel in distress and superfluous chapters (with a strong female lead and more discipline in ending the book I'd say six stars of five (which would be beyond logic ) ) ) ( yes, I do count my brackets, I've learned LISP in early days).
(Review written 2015-04, shortly after reading the book. Haven't read it again)