Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

I’ve obviously gotten a bit behind on my reading.

We left the Folchart family happily living with Elinor, but of course things do not stay that way.  Basta and the Magpie are still loose in the world; Dustfinger still wants to get home and Meggie and Mo are not the only ones with the magical voice.  One after another the majority of the heroes from the last book end up in Inkworld whether they want to be there or not.  We forget that the story and lives continue after the book itself ends and the story within Inkheart has taken surprising turns.  Dustfinger is in danger but he isn’t the only one.

I alternated being very frustrated and being interested.  Honestly I feel like Inkheart stood almost too well on it’s own to have a sequel.  It took quite some time before I really felt drawn in by the stakes of this book.  I don’t know if they ever drew me in really.  I kept reading because I already cared about the cast: Farid and Meggie, Mo and Resa, Dustfinger…  I could have used some more Elinor.  There was romance and death, well obviously the next book is Inkdeath but I feel like it is going to be even more forced.  I still love Cornelia Funke’s words, her lyrical descriptions, the worlds that she can create, but I think part of it is I read Inkheart so long ago that it has been finished for me for quite some time.  It’s still a good story and I still love Cornelia Funke but I probably won’t ever reread this series.  I need some easy reading now.

This is the second book in the Inkheart trilogy.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Reading Reckless made me realize, duh I should be finally finishing this trilogy!  Yes I’ve read it before, in the dark days before I blogged.  Mom and I both devoured it.  I feel a little silly giving a summary of a book that I feel like most have heard of, it is a movie as well.

Meggie’s dad repairs old books but his relationship with the written word goes much farther.  If he reads aloud sometimes things come out and that is what happened years ago when an evil man named Capricorn appeared in their living room years ago.  Meggie is thrust into the kind of adventure that we prefer to experience from the safety of a nice reading chair and it is up to her to change the course of this story.

It’s a book about stories coming to life… I’d have a hard time not loving it even if it weren’t written by the fantastic Cornelia Funke.  Meggie is the perfect protagonist, at 12 she is young enough that the younger readers will be drawn into the book but she is precocious enough that everybody loves her.  Around the time I read this the first go round I was pretty convinced that I was going to end up a lot like Elinor, now the only difference is that Ben is around so that if I ever do get lost in a giant house full of books he’ll come looking for me.  The “real world” characters are very much like real people: sometimes you love them, they make you laugh, sometimes you want to bop them on the head, sometimes you hate them.  Mo, Elinor, Meggie, and Fengolio are very real.  Dustfinger I would say is on par with them.  Farid has the beginnings of being real.  Then there is Capricorn.  He is as he was written, pitiless and cold hearted.  Funke writes such gorgeous imagery, and then of course there are the literary references which make me want to read even more books…  Yes I love it absolutely.

I’m not big on books I love being made into movies.  Even if I like the movie then their vision is now in my brain preventing me from using my full imagination.  Luckily it had been long enough since I saw the movie that the only thing I remembered was that the people brought out by Darius had words on them, which I thought was kind of cool and a good way to show flaw without overdoing it on the face makeup.  So I looked up the movie after I finished like a bad girl and suddenly remembered that Paul Bettany was Dustfinger.  I love Paul Bettany, partially because he is good at characters you have a love hate relationship with like Dustfinger.   Anyway… like many book series the film set didn’t make it past number 1 but I am off to read number 2!

This is the first book of the Inkheart trilogy.

Reckless by Cornelia Funke

I’ll start out with an interesting cover note, the one pictured here is the paperback copy that I have.  Featured on the cover is Jacob as distinguished by the fact that his eyes are green, not blue or gold.  Though the green swirlies made me unsure at first.  The original cover the black with the frame and the green face, that is Will.  Now a making fun of myself moment: notice those names?  Jacob and Will… hmm that rings a bell… Jacob and Wilhelm… okay so yes they have the Grimm brothers name.  The shame is that is was over of a quarter of the way through a book filled with fairy tales made real before I realized the Reckless brothers were named after the Grimm brothers. Cue facepalm.

So so far you know that we have a fairy tale land and two brothers.  Their father disappeared when they were young.  They’re mother recently died of cancer.  For years older brother Jacob has been disappearing for huge chunks of time, but in some ways he never left their father’s study.  In the room that they all avoid is a mirror that is a door into another world.  A world that Jacob prefers over reality.  Then Will stumbles in after him and is cursed and Jacob must find a way to save him.

This is not a happy fairyland.  The bad guys are worse and the happy endings aren’t necessarily true.  Jacob’s best friend is Fox, a vixen who is actually a girl he once saved.  Jacob Reckless has made a name for himself as a treasure hunter, finding legendary magic items.  Then there is Will who trusts his brother absolutely even though he left so often.  There are other interesting people to the cast but I don’t want to spoil anything.  Jacob feels like a gallant hero, but you also see the vulnerable young man underneath.

I started this not realizing there was going to be a second book but honestly I began to seriously suspect about halfway through.  I’ve been avoiding series because they’re a reason for me to want to buy more books but well it’s Cornelia Funke, it’s fairly assured I’m going to buy what she puts out anyway.  I love her characters and the worlds she creates.  They always feel so complete to me.  Complete immersion.  I also love her writing, everything about it, and I suppose translator Oliver Latsch probably gets some credit for that, but I know I love everything she has written and not all of it was translated by him.

This is definitely a book that could be read easily by a male or a female I think and it is a great crossover that is adult but would definitely be enjoyed by young adults as well.  Sometimes I have issues writing when part of my gut is to just say: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE… READ IT!

This is the first book of the Mirrorworld series.

Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke

When I closed the book my first thought was, “Why didn’t this book exist for me as a child?”  I would have read this over and over without end.  For lovers of Tamora Pierce here is a book for the younger generation.  The writing is seamless and simple.  Every little girl will sympathize with Igraine and every big girl too.  You grin at her quirky family.  I personally fell in love with the sorrowful knight.  This is an adventure that scoops you up and carries away and afterwards you simply wonder, “Already?”  This magical world will make you want to come back again and again.