Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Tintentod

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Tintentod by Cornelia Funke

5 reviews

noellegrace8's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Altogether, a great final installment to a great trilogy. When I was a kid, I used to hate the chapters that contained Elinor's pining for the Inkworld because it felt like a detour from the action. But as an adult I can appreciate the absolute depression she slips into, because it's more relatable now. The entire book brings the overarching trilogy's story to an interesting end and even invites us to explore some other characters more (such as Violante). The continual bird motif is also cool.

The lack of Dustfinger in this one is so disappointing! In many ways, he feels like a main character in books 1 and 2, but in 3 he feels a bit forgotten. I also don't love the second fake death. Mo should have been able to feel that he was still alive, so it just felt like purposefully leaving us in the dark for dramatic effect. I'm also not sure how I feel about all the different character perspectives she takes with narration in this one; it feels too nebulous. The other big issue I have with this one is Orpheus. He is just so horrible. It's like reading the Umbridge parts of Harry Potter. I honestly do not know if I want to read the new 4th installment when it comes out because I read it was centered around him. He's racist, a sexual predator, and completely self-obsessed.

I don't factor performance into audiobooks, but I'd give Allan Corduner 4/5 stars. There wasn't much to comment on; he's very run-of-the-mill, in that he doesn't have a ton of variance in voices, but his narration is fine enough.

Content Warnings

orchidlilly's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

Ah, Inkdeath. Poor, mildly disappointing Inkdeath. This entire series suffers from what I like to call triligitus. That is to say, the trilogy starts with a bang, loses a little momentum in the middle book, and the third book falls disappointingly flat on its face. I’m exaggerating a bit, of course, Inkdeath isn’t in any way bad, per say, but it just feels unsatisfying. There’s plenty to like in the book, sure. The prose is just as good as it’s always been, the main plot with the Adder is wrapped up well, and the worldbuilding is lovely as usual. That being said, I have some specific gripes for how the characters are written in particular.
Violante rather comes into her own, moving from a somewhat tragic background figure to a somewhat competent and fully fleshed out one. It’s nice to see a fantasy book have a powerful female character, but Violante is far from perfect. After all, god forbid we have a female character without a love interest, so she has to be weirdly besotted with Mo for no good reason. Despite her relative independence, Violante, our only non-stereotyped female character, still spends most of her time waiting for the men to do the work that she’s not strong enough to do herself.
The men of the story, and the world of the book as a whole, have always been somewhat sexist in nature, but Inkdeath seems to really dial that up for no apparent reason. Maybe if this fantasy-branded sexism was in any way discussed as something needing fixed, it would have been alright, but as is the world and book seem to just accept it as the way things are, making me wonder if that’s not also how Funke views it.
Then there’s the love triangle. It’s kind of obvious that it was just shoehorned in to fit the rising popularity of love triangles in YA and middle-grade books at the time. If Doria had been introduced in the second book as an alternate love interest from the get-go, things would have felt more natural. But he only starts showing up here, in the last book, and so his addition feels a little off-kilter.
And just as an aside, I’ve never been huge on pregnancy subplots, and I feel that this one especially, takes away what little agency Resa had as a character and instead pushes her further into the simple role of worried mother and wife.
Now, this is a lot of complaining about a book that I’ve given three stars. It’s not a bad book by any means, nor is it a bad ending to a trilogy. It just feels like a bit of a letdown, is all.

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