I always feel a little sad when a series comes to an end. And you just know this is going to be the end...with a title like Inkdeath...what else could you expect!?

Inkdeath is the third and final book in the Inkworld trilogy, and after the shocking conclusion to Inkspell, there was no way I was going to miss this one. Starting off immediately where Inkspell left off, which I can say no more about, as it will entirely ruin the ending of that book. Suffice to say, events are not particularly happy and the characters have to get themselves out of quite a mess in this book.

Inkspell really redeemed itself after the series got off to an iffy start in Inkheart. Characters were a little more fleshed out, plot developments were more intriguing and the Inkworld was very well described. Inkdeath had my attention throughout, not least because at least one of my favourite characters' life hung in the balance through most of the tale. However, the plot was a little disjointed, and the writing delved too often into quite deep metaphysical debates on whether or not we can shape our own destinies if everything is already written on the page. This is a concept that I am not sure many children would understand, nor would they want to give a great deal of thought to it. And to be quite frank, I lost interest in those parts of the story, and tended to skip the pages that concerned them, a habit I ususally try to avoid. Also, this book seemed a lot more violent than the previous instalments, which though it did not bother me, I can imagine being quite offputting for parents.

The ending was somewhat conclusive, though left the story open for further development...but I for one hope they leave it where it is. A somewhat unsatisfying conclusion for me personally, though it was not possible for me not to read it!

Loved this conclusion! Reviewed on my book blog. ( )

Volume three in the Inkspell series.

This review refers to the audiobook version only.

After spending almost 44 hours in my car with Mo, Meggie, Dustfinger, and all the other wonderful characters in the Inkworld Trilogy, I find that they've left a big hole to fill. It's been a long time since a series or trilogy has captured my interest in the same way. The story is rich and compelling with a constantly twisting and shifting plot.

Inkdeath is a much bleaker and darker book than its predecessors, and Orpheus (who plays a large role) may be the greatest villain of the trilogy. He is the villain that you love to hate!

My only disappointment in the final book was the narration by Allan Corduner. The first book's narrator Lynne Redgrave was fine. Inkspell's Brendan Fraser was fantastic - just the right amount of quiet mystery to his voice. Unfortunately, I found Allan Corduner's voice to be too nasal and cynical. Even Farid, who had been one of my favorite characters, comes off as a whining complainer in Corduner's rendition. If I hadn't already become attached to the characters, his reading style may have been enough to put me off. Skip the audio version for this book.

Still, the Inkworld Trilogy is a unique story with a gripping plot. Love, envy, uncertainty, hatred - Funke leaves no aspect of human nature untouched as the characters come to terms with themselves and the very nature of the Inkworld. Whether predordained or self-determined, all will find their destiny in Inkdeath.

3.5 stars for the audio version, 4.5 stars for the book
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InkDeath is about the continued journey of Meg, Mo, and Resa. The trio, along with their friends, protect Mo, who everyone suspects is Bluejay, the legendary theif who stole from the rich to give to the poor.

To end all this nonsense that Mo is going through, being called Bluejay for example, they mange to go throug the castle of their enemy, Adderhead, to kill him.

They finally, afer many failures, get through, and find the book that kills their enemy. Adderheads grandson, Jacopo, at the end, finds the book, and gives it to Mo in secret, while he is weaving another book that would replace the unfound one (the one that Jacopohas). All Mo needs to do now is write three words: Heart, Spell, Death.

After Mo writes it, Adderhead dies, and the win the victory of their enemy!! ( )

An amazing book. Cornelia Funke is the Victor Hugo of the Fantasy World. Fearless, imaginative, and able to touch your heart of hearts in a paragraph or two (give or take.)

Inkdeath is by far the darkest book in the trilogy. Angst and fear for one's beloved characters weaves throughout it's pages. Yet, at the same time, subtle beauty is snuck in during the darkest of times.

With this trilogy finally closed, I have to say that Cornelia Funke has renewed my hope for modern literature. Perhaps humanity's literary future is not as bleak as I have feared for so long. ( )

Cornelia Funke is a master Inkweaver whose love of the written word drips from every precious page of this terrific trilogy. To read it aloud is to step into the magic and I'm certain I'm not the only one who was disappointed they could not read Mortimer Folchart into life. ( )

It is finished. I managed to read the entire trilogy, all 50 pounds of it. I am convinced the author needs a lesson in word economy. As wonderful as the story is, there are times where the words just keep going and going and going. It is as though she was under the same delusion of grandeur that Fenoglio and Orpheus suffered. Despite my complaints, I still enjoyed this book. The last 100 pages are fantastic - all story lines collided and came to a satisfactory end. ( )

Inkdeath is the final volume in the trilogy that takes place in Inkworld. There is a sense of gloominess and fear since the evil ruler Adderhead became immortal thanks to a book that Mo bound in exchange for his freedom, prisoners, his wife’s and daughter’s life. Mo has embraced his persona as the Bluejay, a Robin-hood type of character, and does not seem interested in returning to his world. Dustfinger has returned from the dead, and along with Mo, they must bring the Adderhead to the White Women, or they will take Maggie and Mo. Although the scenes constantly change from on set of characters to another, there is a constant sense of danger throughout the book. Although this novel is lengthy, I had a hard time putting it down. The intended audience has shifted from young readers (Inkheart) to a more mature audience, as each book in the trilogy grew a little darker with this final installment appealing to young adults and adults more than to children. ( )

This is the final book, and the darkest, of the Inkworld Trilogy. The main characters are still in the Inkworld and dealing with the consequences of their actions in the previous books. As in 'Inkspell' Funke plays around with the author's relationship with their characters and story and the power of books. A good read, if slightly too long. ( )

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. ( )

Many people warned me that this book was a slow read. Honestly, I think they're just so enamored with the previous books that they'd can't get into this one. It's a much darker tale and delves more into the thoughts of the characters than Inkspell and Inkheart. For this alone, I loved the book.

There's not just one plot going on here - and the plots that do exist are forever twisting and turning, leaving you absolutely breathless as you try to find out where they end up...It's reminiscent of political intrigues and thrillers, but in a much more fun setting.

This is one of those times when a sequel/finale really does outdo its predecessors....I can't say much more without giving anything away. =)

As a technical side note....The paper used in this first edition hardcover I have is absolutely wonderful to feel and read...It's very smooth-grained, thin but heavy-weighted paper. I've never been in love with a type of paper before, but I'm sorely tempted to contact the publisher about this one! ( )

I can't finish this book. I've tried again and again, putting it down and then grabbing it again a few weeks later thinking "this is it! Now I can devote more energy to this!" But no - if at first you're not drowning in the effort to remember so many characters, then you're trying to recall the situations that brought them there. The style and quality is there, the will is lacking. I don't think I'll pick it up again.

I loved Inkheart. I loved Inkspell a little more. Cornelia Funke had a tough act to follow. Inkdeath is a good book, but not as great as its predecessors.

We get clued in a bit more about the Inkworld. The possibilities always seem endless. However, plot twists become a bit more formulaic with Fenoglio and Orpheus able to write in new plot twists with the stroke of a pen.

The book has such great characters-Mo, Resa, Meggie, Dustfinger. There are some nasty villains too-Adderhead, Piper, Mortola. It is for them that I wanted to keep reading. There are some plot twists as Mo/the Bluejay tries to avoid capture.

Funke deftly writes an ending that should avoid additional sequels, and brings to a close one of the most unique of all kidlit series. ( )

It took my a little while to remember all of the characters from the last book. Once I did I greatly enjoyed it. All loose ends are tied up very neatly. The characters are written with such depth and emotion, it's hard not to feel for them. This book seemed to be written more for adults than children with it's complex plot and numerous characters. ( )

I really enjoyed the last book in this series. The second was a tough read for me... it took forever. This one just flew by. And I was sad when it was finished. ( )

Too many characters—but overall a satisfying, fun read. ( )

Inkdeath is the third book in the Inkheart trilogy. As it is a conclusion, I'm having difficulty writing a summary of it that doesn't give away a spoiler so I'm not going to. This book is a massive tapestry, there is so much going on. It's been awhile since I read Inkspell and for the first 100 pages I struggled to remember who several characters were and what most of them were doing when we left off. I wish I had known there was a glossary in the back. But having enjoyed Funke's previous novels, I persevered and was rewarded. After the long climb up, the rollarcoaster took off and I was grasping the grab bar and holding my breath. It is a pageturner and I began to resent interuptions like work and sleep. When people on LT ask me why I bother reading YA, invariably Funke's name comes up. She is such a wonderful storyteller. The details she includes really help you to become invested in the characters. I identified with so many, but curiously, not Meggie this time. I felt that Funke let Meggie fall by the wayside. Fenoglio was probably my favorite. At one point he asks "Were tourist visas (for his story) being handed out these days?" and I laughed so hard at that. I enjoyed both his awe and disdain at the world he had created, and how others were mucking with it. Inkdeath was more of an adult tale this time around and it was much darker than the other two. Not that the others didn't have serious things in them but I felt this one was particularly black. I guess it's similar to the Potter books in that way. I enjoyed it at least as much as Inkheart (maybe more, I'll have to do another reread) and definitely more than Inkspell. I felt it was a satisfying end but if Funke ever wants to write another Ink episode, you won't hear any complaints from me! ( )

I had a harder time getting through this book than the previous two, but that was probably because I listened to the first two. I really enjoyed how this book pulled together the trilogy. ( )

This book came to my interests three years ago when my younger sister introduced it to me. At first I thought no way I am not going to read some stupid girl book so I didn't. A week later she said to me "Come on, it's a really good book, PLEASSSSSEEEEEE!!!" I agreed and read it. While I was reading it I noticed that it was not at all a girly book it was the type of book that I absolutely love to read. I should have taken into account the agelong saying Don't judge a book by it's cover. This book was a fascinating fantasy book that introduced a whole new idea in imagination. It captivated me. I loved the setting of this novel it was well decided upon. I would recommend this book for anyone who is intersted in the fantasy genre. ( )

An excellent series. Though I liked volumes 1 & 3 better than volume 2. ( )