Inkdeath (original 2007; edition 2008)

I had a hard time getting into this one... the characters felt drab, the story tiresome. It picked up about halfway through and I was more engaged. Still not my favourite one, though. ( )

6080

Unsurprisingly, given the title, Inkdeath is very, very preoccupied with death. The death of loved ones, the fear of death, cheating death, what happens after death... Reading it is almost like reading about the process of writing, as more and more detail is put into the world -- albeit from the inside. I do feel like all these books got rather needlessly complicated, that at some point it just went too far. I love the ideas and appreciate some of the things that happen and the way the characters are revealed by it, but for a slick, absorbing story, we could've done with a few less threads. It feels a little... cluttered, at times. There's so many villains, all at cross-purposes; so many heroes who keep getting parted and then reunited by a twist in the tale... and so on and so forth.

The characters get developed a lot more in this book. The fact that the book is third-person-not-very-limited, as I sometimes call it, kind of doesn't help. We see through so many different eyes that that doesn't help with the feeling of it being a little too cluttered. There's Farid, Meggie, Mo, Resa, Dustfinger, Orpheus, Elinor, Fenoglio... Sometimes it feels rather more like being told than being shown, because the narrative does get right up close to the characters.

I do like the characters and think they have some quite interesting quirks and storylines, though. Mortimer's interested me quite a lot: the whole dilemma about is he becoming the Bluejay because of what Fenoglio wrote, or is the Bluejay simply becoming more and more associated with Mortimer because the original character was based on him? The whole plotline about the White Women was interesting, too, their involvement with both Dustfinger and Mortimer. I didn't feel Resa or Roxane much as characters, but I did feel for Mortimer and Dustfinger being separated from them. I loved the part about Mortimer and Dustfinger becoming bound together. They already were, in some ways, but their relationship was so horribly complex. In a way, the fact that they can see eye to eye thanks to what happens in this book is a lovely thing.

Fenoglio's character began to annoy me quite a lot, in this book. He was already getting there in the last book, but he seemed to me everything that I can hate about authors: all pompous about his own work, obsessed with the idea of writer's block and blaming it on everyone else, and unwilling to admit that once a story is written it's out of your hands. He was quite a realistic character, but still an annoying one.

As for the ending, I was quite happy with it. I thought it quite realistic that Meggie ended up not being with Farid after all -- that was unexpected, actually. The happily ever after was nice, though, and the sense of the story continuing on beyond what's written on the page. Yay! ( )

This was a nice ending to a good series. It was a very fast read for a 700 page book. The author does a very good job with building up the villians in this series. It was enjoyable to see all (well, most of them) of the loose ends tied up in this book. I really liked revisiting the characters from the last two books: Mo, Resa, Meggie, and Dustfinger along with getting to know some of the side characters like Violante and some of the robbers. Good book, even for older fantasy readers like myself.

FINALLY FINISHED!! I actually debated giving this book only 3 stars just because it took me SO SO SO SO SO SO LONG to finish it. But I loved the story, with all it's crazy twists and turns and how everything turned out all right in the end. Plus Allan Corduner read it, and he's freaking awesome... (He read [b:The Book Thief|736301|The Book Thief|Markus Zusak|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1177853780s/736301.jpg|878368] by Markus Zusak, too...) So, overall, the story was awesome, the characters were great, and whoever translated it from German did an AWESOME job.

The following is REALLY REALLY spoilery:

Can I just say that Doria is a stud? I think he's pretty freaking awesome... When Fenoglio told Meggie about the other story he'd written about Doria? :) It was awesome! I'm glad Meggie ended up with him. Farid was driving me a bit batty during this book (and the last one)... He would follow Dustfinger around like a loyal pet dog, and then expect Meggie to be über-excited when he finally showed up... I'm glad she got over him.

And I KNEW Dustfinger would come back! I TOTALLY called it. It was just like Alias. Dustfinger died like 42 times, but never stayed dead. Same with Mo, of course, except he only died like 38 times. ;)

I love that they stayed in the Ink World in the end. I thought that was very appropriate... And Meggie's little brother (no name???) doesn't believe half of what Mo and Resa and Meggie tell him about the world they come from... I hope he gets a spin-off book. Cornelia Funke TOTALLY left it wide open... ( )