What We’re Reading

Inkspell | Cornelia Funke

Rating:

A year after character’s from one of Meggie’s favorite books, Inkheart, made chaos of their lives, Meggie and Mo are happy at home with Aunt Elinor, and Meggie’s Mother, Resa, finally returned from her captivity in the book. But Resa’s mind often turns to that other world which she knew for so long. And Meggie’s fascination knows no bounds. Dutifully she’s written down all the stories her mother has told her; Mo has bound them into books for her. But his concern is growing heavy. He wants her to give the Inkworld a rest. At least for awhile. And she’s about to store the books away, too. Until the boy her father read out of his story the previous year turns up at the door with stories of Dustfinger returning home to Inkheart, Basta planning his death, and the deaths of Meggie’s family, someone called Orpheus having the last copy of the book. Ultimately, he wants to be read into the story after Dustfinger, to warn him. He wasn’t supposed to be left behind.

Meggie agrees to try–but only if she goes with him. And so she rewrites Orpheus’ words, adds in a few to take her too, writes a letter to her family, and off they go.

But for all that Inkheart is one of her favorite stories, and the Inkworld is somewhere she’s always wanted to see, her arrival leaves her wishing immediately that she hadn’t gone through with it. Which means her only hope is to find Fenoglio, the book’s author, to see if he can write her back home.

Only the longer Meggie finds herself in this strange yet familiar world, the more it begins to feel like her own. And though she misses her family and her old life, and there are parts of the Inkworld she could do without, she also doesn’t want to leave it. That’s the way with words in this story–all-powerful, life-changing, game-playing. Can they together save this world they love so much, or will it be their doom in the end?

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The Inkspell | Cornelia Funke by Jaemi, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 7:21 am by Jaemi and is filed under Book Review, Series. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: adventure, children's books, fantasy, juvenile fiction, magic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.