by Cornelia Funke
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Moonlight fell on Elinor’s bathrobe, her nightdress, her bare feet, and the dog lying in front of them.”
I fell in love with Inkheart when I read it more than three years ago. I thought it was a brilliant concept, and I loved the story. I called it a “book lovers book”, and gushed about the characters, the plot, the little quirks. I read Inkspell soon after, and I didn’t care for it as much. So, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, three years later, that I was completely bored by the third in the trilogy.
Now, perhaps this is because I waited so long in between reading the second and the third, and I didn’t bother re-reading the second again. But, I found myself unwilling to remember who all the characters were, and what their roles were, and how they fit into this very intricate world Funke has created. I also found that I’ve lost my original enthusiasm for the plot — which now seems very convoluted and hackneyed, not to mention more adult than is warranted in an upper-middle-grade book (even though my library has classified this one as teen). I didn’t care about Mo’s struggles with being a Robin-Hood-like outlaw. I didn’t care that Fenglio didn’t care, or that Elinor’s wallowing in depression because everyone’s gone to Inkworld without her. And so Meggie’s pining after Farid: what of it? She didn’t do much else (that I read). In addition, it’s a very slow — check that: excruciatingly slow — start; 150 pages in, I was thoroughly bored with the book. And so I did something I rarely do: I skipped around, looking for something more interesting to happen (spoiler: Dustfinger comes back. Woo-hoo! Except, he’s not nearly as intersting or complex), and when it didn’t — not really — I read the last 150 pages.
Because, even though the book was overlong and painfully slow, I still wanted to know how their story ended.
I guess I still care, if only a little tiny bit.
