I wrote last week that I wasn’t getting on with Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, I wrote that I felt no incentive to continue on to the following chapter at the close of each proceeding one and that the character of Meggie (the 12 year old main character) just somehow seemed ‘wrong’. However I persevered and after about 200 pages suddenly I wanted to know what happened next and I wolfed down the remaining 300 pages. The character of Meggie still annoyed me, not that the character herself was annoying in that she had annoying traits, it wasn’t that, she just stood out as being too two dimensional compared to the more rounded adult characters such as Basta and his superstitions and Fenoglio and his grandchildren, Meggie also seemed a bit too mature for a 12 year old.
By about 200 pages in, Inkheart began to remind me more of Charlie Higson’s Young Bond series, which I do like (even though that series is not flawless either), with our heroes in the minority up against evil slightly OTT henchmen in some hot and exotic location. Cornelia Funke did do hot southern Italian village so well.
So overall I did like this book, although I’m not desperately burning to read the next two, if anything because I know that before I know it Girl Lacer will be old enough to read these books and she won’t read them with such a wannabe writer’s critical eye and she will probably love them and I dare say after she’s finished with them, I’ll read them to.
