Inkworld (1-3) by Cornelia Funke

Inkworld is a series that currently consists of three books (Inkheart, Inkworld, Inkdeath) with a fourth book to be released later this year (2024). It took me quite some time to read this series because they books are VERY dense. Each of the three volumes are over 500 pages long with a lot of descriptors. It’s a series about a girl, Meggie, whose father, Mo, can read things from a book and bring it to life. It turns out the power is not exclusive to him, however, because eventually Meggie, a minor character named Darius, and an antagonist introduced in the second book named Orpheus, all have the same power as well. The catch to being able to read things from books to life is the ability of the reader. Where this power comes from has not been explored.

The world of Inkworld itself is interesting. The first volume takes place in our world, around current day; mostly in Italy. From the second volume on the characters are brought into the world of a book. The book the characters are brought into, Inkheart (authored by Fenoglio who also ends up as an important character), is full of fantasy creatures. There is a major shift in the series when this happens, and it goes from being about Meggie trying to protect her family from one set of antagonists to the world of Inkheart where there is a war between two countries and another slew of enemies.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into the series, but, of course, read the books over the single movie that they chose to adapt, Inklheart! I think that overall the books are interesting, but too long. I feel each book could be about half the length, but that’s just my opinion. There’s a LOT of description– from describing the landscapes to how the characters feel, pull back from the world of Inkheart to our world to see characters hem-hawing around, it can get a bit tiring. I ended up skimming through a lot of the second and third books merely because they got too wordy and I wanted to go BACK to what was actually happening. The second book also makes a huge shift from being mostly about Meggie, to also being about her father, Mo, and the third book takes that shift even further, leaving Meggie to be more of a side character than anything else. It’s unfortunate because Fenoglio, who wrote the Inkheart book in the story, talks about how he doesn’t like to write about women, but he likes to make men the center of all the action. This is also how the series ands up, and from the cover illustation of Inkworld’s fourth book, I expect that to not change.