The book’s outstanding and different enough to be worth reading even (especially?) if you’ve seen the movie a hundred times.

It’s got a framing and woven-in narrative of the author stand-in tracking down this book his dad read him, discovering it was mostly awful, dry crap, and editing it down (and translating it) to a “the good parts” version like his dad read to him. The (kinda pathetic and melancholy) adult story going on is interesting to an adult reader, and… creates the opportunity to read the actual novel with a “the good parts” approach when reading it to a kid (this has to have been on purpose, it works great).

The author (William Goldman) was a screenwriter so the action scenes are snappy and great and the dialogue tight, but he also filled the book with jokes that only work in print, so you won’t just be getting a repeat of the movie on the humor side (though many of those jokes are in it, too).

Some sequences are greatly expanded and especially notable are large and effective back-story chapters for Fezzick and Inigo.