Background: Inkdeath is the final book in the trilogy which began with “Inkheart”. It follows the story of the book restorer Mo and his young daughter Meggie. Early in Inkheart we learn that Mo has a very special talent: when he reads out loud, his voice beguiles the characters to step right out of the story into our world. And sometimes, people are swept from our world and into the book…

This series got darker with each successive book. The first book, “Inkheart”, was an adventure story, with a couple of comfortably scary characters as the best children’s literature must. Then followed “Inkspell” and things got serious. The characters were faced with some very grown-up choices. While I loved it myself, Inkspell is not a book I would recommend for a young reader.

Inkdeath continues further along the dark path where “Inkspell” left us. Meggie, Mo and Resa have entered into the story world of the book Inkheart, having read themselves into its pages. Happily, this book is set entirely in this fantasy world, the “Inkworld”. There are few authors who have succeeded in creating that sense of awe that I crave from a fantasy book. JRR Tolkien, Phillip Pullman, Ursula Le Guin and a couple of others. Inkdeath is another such a book. This is a description of the landscape surrounding the robber’s camp:

One could still find giant’s footsteps in the ravine where the camp lay. The rain of the last few weeks had turned them into ponds where gold-spotted frogs swam. The trees on the slopes of the ravine rose to the sky, almost as tall as the trees in the Wayless Wood. Their withering leaves covered the ground, which was cool now in autumn, with gold and flaming red, and faries’ nests hung among the branches like over ripe fruit.

If you looked south you could see a village in the distance, its walls showing pale as mushrooms between the trees, but it was such a poor village that even the Milksop’s greedy tax-gatherers didn’t bother to come this way. Wolves howled by night in the surrounding wood, pale grey owls like little ghosts flew over the shabby tents, and horned squirrels stole what food there was to steal among the camp fires.

But while there is beauty, the characters are seldom left in peace. Meggie and her family are faced with some hard choices. Is it all just a story, and what responsibilities do they have to the other characters? Mo in particular gets “sucked deeper into the story” as he fights against injustice. He does not want to leave, because if he did, who would fight in his place? Here is Resa, Mo’s wife, longing to come home to her own world again:

Resa watched the strange creature go, and abruptly straightened up. “it’s all lies”, she said. Her voice shook on every word. “This beauty is only a lie. It’s just meant to take our minds off the darkness, all the misfortune, and all the death”

Darkness, misfortune and death are strong in this story. Unlike much fantasy, Cornelia Funke does not spare her characters the complexity of adult life. They have to make some hard choices. Guilt, jealousy, spite, selfishness – these are not just felt by the villains.

I was reminded again and again of “The Neverending Story” ( the book, not the movie). As in that book, we have the characters living in a story inside a story, and the exploration of the importance of fantasy, truth and morality. But this is a much more complex take on that issue. Lies and stories are twisted up together with no way of untangling them, and at times it seems that Cornelia Funke herself questions the act of creating and manipulating character’s lives through stories.

The story is complex, and I wished that I had taken the time to re-read “Inkspell” again before diving into “Inkdeath”. At times, the book feels very long. There are relentless passages where the sadness threatenes to overwhelm the plot. This is a bleak, dark jewel of fantasy for grownups. ( )

This is the continuation and end of the adventures of Mo and Meggie Folchart, the father-daughter pair who can read characters right out of their stories -- and are now inside the Inkworld itself! Fenoglio, the writer of Inkheart, still can't find his words and has been drinking instead of writing. Mo has embraced his role as the Bluejay, a robber who upholds justice in a world where the evil Adderhead is immortal because of a book that Mo bound himself in return for his wife and daughter's lives. How to make it all right again when the story seems to have taken a life of its own?

I was very excited to read the continuing story, as I loved Inkheart with its varied characters and layering of "story" as a theme. Inkdeath was similar in its continual reminder that this is a story...and who knows where it's going? There are a lot of characters that were a little hard to keep track of, having not reread the first two books in the trilogy recently. I did start to get a little frustrated with the postmodernist elements (this is a story - just a story - where is it going? Who is writing it now? What kind of power do words have?) and the sheer length of the book, but in the end I was sucked in and rooting for Mo, Resa, Meggie, and the rest. I would definitely consider rereading the series. ( )

Some time has past since the covers of Inkspell closed. Mortimer Flochart has taken to the role of a Bluejay quite well. Meggie slowly realizes Farid doesn't love her, at least, not the way she has loved him. Dustfinger rests, body untouched and unvisited except by Roxanne, peacefully in the woods. Farid serves Orpheus, who serves those more powerful than he. Fenoglio, the author, drinks away his sorrows instead of writing. The Adderhead still walks immortal but the White Book slowly crumbles from the trick the Bluejay played on him. As Inkdeath opens, the Adderhead has put a large bounty for the Bluejay - the lives of Ombra's children in exchange for his own. Can Mortimer find a way to save Ombra's children and his own skin?

Cornelia Funke has upended several conventions of young adult fiction with the Inkheart trilogy. Young adult fiction, not children's stories, but the fiction - such as Rowling's Harry Potter series, or Rick Riordan's Olympus series, Peter Pan or Wizard of Oz, hell even that godawful Twilight - all of these stories have missing or marginal parental figures. Look around to all stories involving young heroes - no parents, no adult guidance. I'm no psychology buff, nor a firm believer in Freud, but someone needs to do an analysis of Western literature. Instead of missing parental figures, Funke creates a kind, generous, humble parent in Mortimer, pairing him with the feisty, fiery Meggie. In Inkheart, Meggie controls the story, she pushes the action, and Funke's authorial lens never loses sight of the heroine. As the story ages, as Inkheart slips into Inkspell and falls into Inkdeath, Meggie grows up and learns she can't control this story - Funke moves her authorial eye away from Meggie and towards the adults: Fenoglio, Dustfinger and Mortimer. By this book, Inkdeath, Meggie can't save her father - in fact, except for one small instance, she doesn't even play a major role. She becomes the minor character as the role and importance of the parent, Mortimer, begins to grow. I commend Funke for reinvigorating the parent-child relationship in Inkdeath. I find the pervasiveness of worlds where parents are missing, neglectful or outright abusive disturbing.

Funke also lays little thought-provoking philosophical eggs into Inkdeath. As Fenoglio finds his words and pen, he realizes he no longer controls the story. His words still create - giants, healing herbs - but he no longer knows what the consequences of his quill will be. Furtively, he begins to think as himself as only one of many characters, a character with power over words, but something has power over him. Using Fenoglio as a springboard, Funke introduces the reader to Plato's cave: who, exactly, is the author of the author?

Orpheus, the hack-singer and speaker, can control the story, but only with Fenoglio's words. Orpheus relies on the last remaining copy of Inkheart to perverse into his dirty work, creating bastard creations and riches, much like the act of translation can sully a well-written story.

Funke's tale of books for booklovers can be read as a fabulous fairy-tale of Dickenson proportion, but, dear reader, Funke has done slightly more. ( )

Definitely my least favourite of the series. I loved Inkheart and Inkspell and was so excited when i could finally read the final book. I hate to say it, but I was a little let down by the final. I think it could have been written better. It took me a long time to finish as I was not that interested reading it. ( )

The most disappointing in the series. the story bogs down in the middle, I found myself skimming to make it to a section where the story was moving along. ( )