"Inkheart" by Cornelia Funke

I first heard of this book when they made a movie version in 2008 -- my friend ED was super excited about it because she loved the book.  But it wasn't until The Book Chewers selected it to be their first Book of the Month that I finally got it out of the library and read it.

I suppose a quick synopsis would be in order, so I'll get that out of the way first.  Meggie's father, Mo, repairs books.  Her mother disappeared when Meggie was three, and we learn that she was actually sucked into a book in exchange for a book character coming to our world.  Mo can read people and things out of books, you see, though he never does so again after losing his wife.  But then some very nasty characters from a book called Inkheart come knocking, Mo and Meggie go on the run to evade them, and it's all a series of captures and escapes from there on.

I'm going to be very honest here:  I did not love Inkheart.  I liked it well enough to finish it, and I'm glad that I did, as I liked the last hundred pages or so the best of all.  But I just didn't love the book as a whole.

Why?  It's well-written, it's imaginative and original, it's got a suspenseful plot, it even has a sad and lonely character.  So why didn't I like it more than I did?

Because I didn't want to be friends with the characters.  I did a long post here on my other blog on this subject, but basically, for me to really like or love a book/movie/show, I have to want to be friends with the characters, to want to hang out with them while they go about their adventures or daily business or whatever.  That's what draws me to a story.  I will forgive plot holes, pedestrian writing, bad logic -- almost anything, just as long as I feel drawn to the characters in this particular way.  And I really didn't want to be friends with anyone here.

I could almost fall in love with Dustfinger, though.  He's sad and lonely, he's got the unrequited love thing going on, and he's very sweet.  But he's also not helpful, and unhelpfulness guarantees that I won't love a character.  So I only like him.

But Meggie, Mo, Elinor, and Fenoglio... nope, don't like them much.  And it really boils down to the fact that Meggie wants to be able to read people out of books like Mo can.  Even after she's seen how much sorrow it causes, lost her own mother this way, seen how very unhappy Dustfinger is being stuck in a world that's not his own... still, she wants to be able to do it too.  I found that very mean and selfish, to be honest.  Mo I do like better, as he didn't know what consequences his ability could have until people started appearing and disappearing.  And Elinor is helpful in her own way, and very generous at the end, so I like her okay.  But Fenoglio is too vain and bossy.

So.  Is this a bad book?  Nope.  Would I recommend it?  Yup, if you like YA adventure and fantasy.  And I still intend to see the movie, as it has Brendan Fraser (yum!), Paul Bettany (aww!), and Andy Serkis (woo!) in it.

If this was a movie, I would rate it:  PG-13 for violence and disturbing images.