Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing., 27 Oct 2008
After reading Inkheart and Inkspell, I was really hoping for great things from Inkdeath. A climatic finish and a proper resolution to the great stories started in the previous books.
What I got however, was a tedious and badly written book. In fact, I struggled to finish it - if I hadn't got a policy of always finishing books I start, I probably would have put it down and stopped reading. There is a startling lack of plot throughout the majority of the book, just tedious meanderings, before Funke suddenly rushes into a climax and throws all the action into about 5% of the novel, leaving many subplots and ideas she started finished with sometimes only a sentence - if they are remembered at all. And even then, I'd been so turned off by the rest of the novel that I found I had trouble caring. There are weird touches to the plot as well, which would be better off in a different story - for example, one character starts turning into a bird and finds it hard to remember their human self, again another plot again crammed into those final pages. I just thought: "What?" It didn't fit with the story. It served no plot purpose.
Furthermore, what happened to the characters? Mo becomes the Bluejay for unexplained reasons, and Meggie morphs into a whiny, tragic, wet blanket who doesn't do much at all. Farid - what Funke did to Farid was criminal. Instead of just being a boy who has an adoration of Dustfinger which he could probably move past with a little maturity, Farid is penalised by Funke for this adoration and he becomes almost a bad character. Certainly his ending implies this. And the introduction of Doria - I have rarely read about a more 1D character than Doria. Truly terrible. The rest of the cast fared not much better, the villains with contradictory personalities, the 'good guys' becoming wooden and bland, and hurriedly resolved plotlines. Violante loves the Bluejay? Well, no problem - after drawing out this problem for the entirity of the book, let's solve it by writing one little sentence somewhere in the last chapter about how she might fall for someone else.
I'm also unsure about the ending. I'd have to think about that more, if I felt the book was worth my time. However, I think I owe it to Cornelia Funke, Inkheart and all its wonderful characters to ignore Inkdeath, and pretend the story stops with Inkspell. Because they didn't deserve what happened in Inkdeath.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
disappointed, sorry, 2 Feb 2009
A Kid's Review
I was 12 or 13 when I first found myself between the pages of Inkheart. I was taken directly into a world that was immediately believable, realistic, and completely original. I eagerly anticipated the release of Inkspell after hearing that Inkheart was the first in a trilogy, and I wasn't disappointed.
However, when I read Inkdeath, I found myself frustrated and annoyed with the direction that the storyline had gone. Although the first and second installments seemed to blend together almost perfectly, I felt as I was reading Inkdeath that it was less believable, realistic, and original. Firstly, I took me several chapters to get myself immersed into the events - I thought the initial few chapters were tedious, less flowing, almost as if the author had written the first two books in one single fluid sitting, but then had a long break before writing the third, and had forgotten what she had been writing about before. I felt that the frayed ends of Inkspell, the second book, had been clumsily, almost hastily glued onto the new threads of the third book Inkdeath.
I confess that although I did enjoy reading the book, I did not find it as pleasurable and ulitmately gripping as i found its two predecessors. I think it was a terrible mistake to eliminate Basta, as he's one of those charcters you love to hate. I didn't realise how much I missed him and his peppermint breath until I opened Inkdeath, and realised he was missing, missing, missing. It was like Silence of the Lambs without Hannibal, 1984 without Big Brother, Star Wars without Darth Vader. One of my main disappointments, however, concerned the Black Prince. In Inkspell, he was a charming, wondrous character with a personality as sharp as his throwing knives; but I was annoyed that in Inkdeath, he seemed to disappear completely, becoming nothing more than a dark figure in the distance, and less the prominent character he was in Inkspell. He barely featured at all in most chapters, other than to be relentlessly beaten and battered. And why even, would anyone in the story attempt to murder a character who seems to be weak in substance anyway? I got the impression that he was nothing more than a puppet figure, but with strings missing, or just a name on a page. I felt the same with Meggie too. In the first two books, she seemed to play the central role as a strong protagonist, similar to Lyra in "His Dark Materials" with that same mixture of vulnerability and strength, yet in this book it was her father, Mo, and his swinging sword that seemed to feature most.
I think most of my negative responses could be because I read Inkheart 4 years ago, but now I'm 16, and it did feel as if I was stepping into a children's book; this is probably why I criticised it so much when i was reading it because I think perhaps I've suddenly become to old for it. However, I do think it's a shame that either I have grown up too much to appreciate this book, or that somehow the original magic has been lost in the weaving of this final book. I'm more sad than annoyed that this book has happened. But to be honest, despite my age, or my opinions, I'd give anything for Cornelia Funke to rewrite this whole book again, take out the pointless subplots and the cliched, banal ending which I have read so many times before, and place more emphasis on already amazing existing characters rather than shoving in new ones. I'll give it a second chance if she does.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well worth the wait!, 22 Oct 2008
I read both Inkheart and Inkspell, both enchanting books. I had to wait over a year for the release of Inkdeath and it was well worth the wait.
You can just imagin yourself there in Inkworld lost in the wayless woods. It has been written with so much detail you could actually be there while you read. It is full of action, happiness and sadness and wonderful creatures you would never have imagined. I just could not put it down.
Highly recommended!
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