The Inkheart Trilogy celebrates the power of readers and writers. So its fitting that Fenoglio who finds himself stuck in Inkworld needs a reader to read him out of his own story. He wishes he could write a different ending.
"I could write one, here and now, and change everything, if only I have someone to read it aloud! Of course he had looked for another Silvertongue but in vain. No Meggie, no Mortimer, not even someone like that man Darius..."
Whenever someone is read into a story, someone or something else is sent out in return. That seems to be the price of the magic spell that works to bring someone out of one world and into the next. When Meggie, Farid and Gwin went into Inkworld, three fire elves came out.
Fenoglio does not seem to think about the ethics of this; he wants out of Inkworld where the villains he created "ruled...after their own fashion."
Review of Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, the first in the Inkheart Trilogy
Funke's story is about the power and magic of books. They bring great joy to a family, Mo, Teresa, and Meggie, and yet they also bring great calamities. When Mo, also called Silvertongue, reads he accidentally transports fictional characters and objects to his own world. Conversely, Mo also inadvertently draws people or things into the book's world.
To his sorrow, and without meaning to, Mo has read his wife, Teresa, into the dangerous world of Inkheart. He has accidently sent a hapless fire-eater into his own world and let loose some of Inkheart's most dangerous villains.
Mo pities the fire-eater, Dustfinger, who longs to return to the pages of Inkheart. Dustfinger hates, the speed, and the crowds of the contemporary world.
Though Dustfinger traitorously works with the arch villian, he later tries to free Mo's family from the clutches of Capricorn and his men. Along with two companions, Farid and Gwin, Dustfinger bravely returns to Capricorn's village.
Mo has two competing desires. He fervently wants to free his wife, Teresa, from Inkheart's pages but he also wants to keep his daughter, Meggie safe.
Capricorn wants Meggie to read another villian to life, the nefarious Shadow, so that he can execute prisoners. Fengolio, Inkheart's author, desperately wants to re-write his own fictional work.
This is a heart-stopping race to the finish for Mo, his family, and his friends. This novel has lots of action but also beautiful passages and characterization.
The Inkheart Trilogy celebrates the power of readers and writers. So its fitting that Fenoglio who finds himself stuck in Inkworld needs a reader to read him out of his own story. He wishes he could write a different ending.
