Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

MG Fantasy. 563 Pages. 5 Stars

Synopsis:

One cruel night, Meggie’s father reads aloud from Inkheart, and an evil ruler named Capricorn escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books. Meggie must learn to harness the magic that has conjured this nightmare. Only she can change the course of the story that has changed her life forever.

My Review:

This absolute classic holds my heart. I first read Inkheart as a middle school girl, and I remembered enjoying it. But I didn’t realize it had been so long since I read it, nor did I anticipate how much joy it would bring to do so.

This time around, I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was amazing! (Though, her voice was so familiar! I still can’t place where I’ve heard it before.) She really made the whole experience even more delightful, so absolute props to that. I did pull out my battered copy from middle school to caress and peruse as I listened. I just couldn’t help myself.

The world is so enchanting and Funke’s prose has magical moments that just make my reader heart smile and my writer heart gleeful! The story really feels like it’s brimming with magic that might bubble out into our own world. And I love stories that do that–stories that stay with you after you close the cover, that make the world around you feel magical. So many stories out there make the world around you feel dull and dreary. They’re wonderful to escape into for a time, but the real art lies, I think, in being able to bestow some of that magic on the reader and show them how to carry it into their everyday lives. A world of readers who can hear the whispers of treasured stories tingles the senses and Funke does such a beautiful job of making her own setting come to life in extraordinary ways.

The characters are some of my favorites. Dustfinger is hands down my favorite. I will always love him. He has wormed his obstinate, uncertain little way into my heart. And Eleanor is so dynamic. She brings a little spunk into the story and keeps us on our toes. Mo is the quiet, dependable, and unquestioningly loving father that soothes the deepest parts of our souls. His trade is just really cool and I love, again, how Funke shows us how to see bookbinding as its own kind of magic. She puts a spin on it that feels like an enchantment, a glorious adventure rather than something dull and tedious. Mo’s love for his work and for Meggie, his measured, deliberate movements, quiet strength, and competence (though he’s not above the feedback of others and admits when he’s over his head) shine brilliantly. I love how the book has such round, dynamic characters who interact with and play off each other so well. Meggie’s devotion to her father is admirable, but she also reacts to Eleanor and Dustfinger and others in a way that drives the story forward. I love how it isn’t just her story. It’s the story of Farid, Fenoglio, Basta, and so many others together.

We follow an adventure that starts on a dark, stormy night with secrets to deep to speak and pasts to painful to forget. Our hearts ache for the characters caught between right and wrong and our curiosity begs to know more. Traveling from a drool-worthy library, any bookworm’s dream, through the beautiful European countryside to remote villages stuffed with more roaming fairytales than reality. The story is a delight and it draws so many small threads together for a beautiful ending. And yet, there is more 🙂

I so look forward to rereading the sequel and then finally finishing the trilogy by reading the third book, after all these years. But I cannot express adequately how much nostalgia and delight rolled into this reading experience. I love this book. I love these characters. I loved this narrator. And I sure hope to revisit this world much more quickly this time.

Content: There’s no romance, though a few very mild hints at a potential one. Eleanor swears a bit, but by European standards, I’m not sure it counts? I’d consider this MG, but again, the book is originally German, so they have different standards than we do in terms of language. Either way, it’s a mild word and not used terribly much, though more than you’d find in most other MG books. There’s a little fantasy violence, but again it’s all pretty mild. I’d feel fine giving the book to an early teen or even preteen personally.

More:

Book 2 in the Inkworld Trilogy is Inkspell (4 Stars)

Book 3 is Inkdeath (5 Stars)

I’ve read and reviewed the above on Goodreads. See the links for more info. This trilogy does need to be read in order.

On GraceBought

If you missed it, check out my thoughts on the next book in the trilogy.

Inkspell