Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke

I loved Inkheart and Inkspell. Meggie and Farid, Mo and Resa - funnily enough, it is the everyday characters from our world that speak to me the most, despite their being surrounded by the fantastical creatures of the Inkworld. (Okay, okay, so Farid is technically from A Thousand and One Nights, or something, whatever.) This world is breathtaking - Funke is truly a master artist. The world she paints is vivid and shocking, at once beguilingly innocent and treacherously evil. Meggie is just a beautiful character - of course, we see a lot of her point of view; she's just the age of the target audience for this book. And it's really a story about how she grows up in the completely frightening world inside a book. Her father, Mo/Silvertongue/Blujay, has the power of reading aloud and making characters from books appear in our world. And of making things from our world disappear into books - which is what happens numerous times to various characters during this series.

But back to Meggie. I could listen to her thoughts all day. She's strong and brave (quality character traits for a young girl, and she wears them well). She's fiercely loyal and loving. People seem to act differently around her. She's special - I can't seem to put it any other way.

Yes, terrible things happen. Though Meggie is in love with Farid, his feelings are unknown. He clearly likes Meggie a good deal; but then, he doesn't seem to mind kissing the maids terribly much. His motives are beyond my ken. (I love that expression.) I hope to find a happily-ever-after for Meggie and Farid, Mo and Resa, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. The Inkworld is fraught with peril and bloodshed, and I'm a little nervous that not everyone will make it out alive.

Update: Yes, there is a happily-ever-after (of sorts). The resolution with Farid made me sad, but he should have seen it coming. It was really his decisions that led to the outcome.

Funnily enough, though, I can't really see this story as a happily-ever-after that way. I wonder if the author has some more Inkworld tales up her sleeve, perhaps to do with Meggie's little brother...I'd read them.

Howl's Moving Castle

I recently read Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. I very much liked the characters and the setting. Sophie is the eldest daughter of a hatmaker, who dies and leaves the girls - and their mother - without adequate funds to live on. The two younger sisters apprentice out, and Sophie stays at home to make hats for her mother's shop. One day, the Witch of the Waste comes into the shop and turns Sophie into an old woman. Sophie, realizing she can't continue her narrow, confined existence any longer, sets out to make her way in the world. She marches off, and finds a job - actually, forces her way into a job - cleaning castle for Wizard Howl. He may be infamous for eating the hearts of young, beautiful girls, but Sophie thinks she'll be safe with him, since she now has the body of a ninety-year-old woman (and she wasn't much to look on in the first place).

I really dug these characters. Sophie goes from a quiet little mouse of a girl who can only make hats to a strong, determined, fierce woman. Michael, Howl's apprentice, is a hoot. He seems as baffled by his master as Sophie. Calcifer, the fire demon who is bound to serve Howl, is amazingly developed for such a being - he has personality, likes and dislikes, and he definitely has a heart, whatever the story says.

The secondary characters and storylines are also compelling. Lettie and Martha as Sophie's sisters develop from cardboard cutouts into interesting people, and Howl's mysterious past could merit another book. (I'd love to find out about his life in Wales before he became Wizard Howl.) Everything eventually gets woven together into a big, confusing, mysterious story that, ultimately, makes sense together. It's fun to read. Also, there's a hint of romance and some very keen scenes wherein Sophie realizes something very important about herself.

I took a look at the manga based on the novel, and I was disappointed. The characters are all jumbled up, the story line has been muddied with some kind of bizarre modern warfare that completely destroys the bucolic setting of the novel, and it's just weird. Starting and ending at the same place as the novel, but completely going off the rails on a crazy train in the middle. If I get a chance, I'll watch the movie the manga is based on, but I'm not expecting anything much from it.

The Tapestry trilogy

I just finished reading the second book in The Tapestry trilogy, The Second Siege (the third book is due next year). I had a lengthy discussion with C about whether or not the series was a Harry Potter rip-off. While I have to say that there are many similarities, there are a number of differences.

The major difference, to me, anyway, is that The Tapestry books are rooted firmly in mythology. Now, don't get me wrong - Rowling is also clearly a student of mythology, and she draws on that knowledge. But The Tapestry books draw on these myths for major characters and story lines. The main character, Max McDaniels, is Cuchulain reborn, and he's frequently referred to as "the Hound of Rowan" (also the name of book one of the series). He and his roommate at Rowan, an academy for "gifted" students (really those with a talent for magic), get themselves caught up in incredible and very dangerous adventures to protect their school and the world at large from the Demon Astaroth.

Although some of the characters come across as stock characters, these are pretty good reads, and I enjoyed them. I'll be looking forward to book three.