Inkdeath

Inkdeath

by Cornelia Funke

I always love coming to the end of a series. Closure is such a lovely thing. These are great books. A true book-lovers books. There are so many nods to the art and love of reading and so many fantastic quotes from great lit at the beginning of each chapter (not totally obscure things either, there were even a couple of Harry Potter quotes!). The premise itself is a book-lovers dream. A bookbinder named Mo discovers that when he reads out loud he can bring characters inside a book to life (and, as he discovers later, he can also read himself and others into a book). The series follows his adventures with his daughter Meggie (and other family members, as well as a whole host of characters from a book entitled Inkheart.) I won't reveal any of the plot from the third book, as it would most definitely contain spoilers for the first and second books.

I will say that I had to sludge a bit through the first half of this book. I was beginning to worry that it lacked the originality of the first book and the exciting new setting of the second. However, it picked up with a bang and ended brilliantly. I had at times thought the writing was a little awkward in the first two books (owing, no doubt, to their having been translated from German), but the problem seemed to be nonexistent in the third. I'd absolutely recommend it and I've added two other Cornelia Funke books to my long list of to-read's, The Thief Lord and Dragon Rider.