Reviews

Alba d'inchiostro by Cornelia Funke

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awriterslament's review against another edition

3.0

I didn't really like Inkdeath. Seriously.

I mean, everything was very exciting, I enjoyed almost - almost - every moment of the book, but I especially hated it when Funke makes Meggie end up with Doria in the end.

It had me sitting there, with my mouth wide open. I was really indignant, because I thought that she didn't do Farid any justice. I am a total Farid fan, and I was really mad at Meggie for choosing him over Doria; the Gary Stu who's overly perfect.

Aside from that, it wasn't exactly happily ever after, which made me happy in a sense, because I like something different for a change.

brittney_tyler's review against another edition

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5.0

Star Rating: 5 stars

Note: This will not be a comphernsive review as this is the final installment of the Inkworld trilogy.

If you had power to mess with life and death, should you? When does a story quit being a story and being real? If it was possible to journey into your favorite story, would you or should you? These questions are addressed within the pages of Inkdeath, the final installment in the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke. This trilogy tells the story of Mortimer (Mo) Folchart, a bookbinder with an angelic voice. His favorite thing to do is to read stories out loud to his wife, Resa, and his daughter, Meggie until the day he decides to read Inkheart, and his wife disappears into the words, replaced by a couple of outlaws named Basta and Capricorn and the strolling player they happened to be torturing at the time, Dustfinger. After this occurs, Mo hides the book away and vows to never read aloud again, although he does instill a love of reading in his young daughter. A decade later, Dustfinger returns to Mo’s house and tells him that Basta and Capricorn are searching for him because they want him to read more characters into our world from Inkheart. Mo packs up Meggie and flees with Dustfinger, thus starting a chain of events that will affect not only our world, but the world on the other side of the pages of Inkheart. Will Mo be caught by Capricorn and Basta? Will Mo and Meggie ever be reunited with Resa and on what side of the words will this reunion happen? Will Dustfinger ever get to go back to the world he misses with every beat of his heart? All these questions and more will be answered over the course of the Inkworld trilogy.

Since this is the concluding novel of the trilogy, I cannot talk in too much detail because everything is pretty much a spoiler, but I did want to talk about my two favorite scenes since they are the main reason why I rated this book 5 stars. My favorite scene or rather setting was the Castle in the Lake and everything that went down there, although to talk about that would be a spoiler. I can, however, talk about how I feel that this castle is a direct reference to the tales of King Arthur. In the King Arthur legends, there are multiple references to mystical/magical places lying at the center of lakes (Sir Tristan, one of King Arthur’s knights falls in love with a women locked in a tower in the center of a lake, leading to Lancelot’s, the famous Knight of the Table Round, birth. She is known as the Lady of the Lake.) In Inkdeath, it is said that the lord of the Castle of the Lake kept his daughters locked away there from the outside world until one of them fell in love with the Adderhead (one of the villains of the trilogy) and ran away, later to become Violante’s, one of the major characters of the Inkworld trilogy, mother. See the allusion? The Castle in the Lake could also be a reference to Avalon, the mystical land where Arthur is sent to await his call back as the Once and Future King. (In Inkdeath, there are multiple characters that have dealings with Death, but it would be a spoiler to tell you how or why, just know that there is an allusion there.) Speaking of that, my other favorite scene is the one where Death steps into the picture. I can’t talk about it here because of major spoilers; just know it was one of my favorite parts of the book. I love when a book uses multi-layered allusions and references and dares the reader to see if they can find them all. It makes the reading experience so much better and when a book does this, I tend to rate it very highly. ☺

All in all, I loved this concluding volume to this amazing and epic trilogy, so much so, that it is my favorite one in the entire set. This is definitely a trilogy worth reading to its end! 5 stars!