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
Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro garnered critical praise when it came out in 2006. Capturing how the human spirit prevails in the face of tragedy, the film rises above most horror/fantasy films.
A new novel for young adults written by Cornelia Funke captures and amplifies the dark magic of the original. Her prose explains many of the aspects of the film that defies explanation. Here's an example. We learn that the insect "fairy's" favorite game was change: "Change was in her nature. It was part of her magic and her favorite game."
This explains why the "fairy" readily changes form from insect to fairy to carnivore.
While the movie evokes images, Funke's prose also gives us each character's internal train of thought.
Funke says of Ofelia's mother, Carmen: "She sat once more in the wheelchair, as if the Wolf (the Capitan) had stolen her feet. He had crippled her."
All of this is metaphorical; Carmen can walk; she just cannot stand up for herself.
Carmen does not believe in magic or fairy tales, believing only delusions e.g. she believes she needs the villainous man, Vidal.
Funke states in another breathtaking passage that illuminate Carmen's thinking:
"We all create our own fairy tales. The dress will make him love my daughter, that's the tale Carmen Cardoso told herself, although her heart knew Vidal only cared for the unborn child he had fathered."
For a deeper understanding of del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, read Cornelia Funke's version.
Blood brothers and members of the Comitatus, Finn and Keiro both have a privileged standing in Incarceron. They are nontheless as the maestra reminds them prisoners. No one can ever leave the living prison that is Incarceron. The prison has many eyes that watch them and a voice that taunt them.
With the aid of a crystal key, Finn, Keiro, Gildas, and Attia hope to escape to the Outside as they Sappique did. After a dangerous escape from the Comitatus, they embark on a quest that tests and transforms them.
Nearly killed by a beast in a cave, the four of them are rescued by a strange Sapienti called Blaze. Blaze takes them to a high tower where he tries to convince them that there is no Outside. But Blaze and nearly everyone else is not who they say they are.
On the outside, Claudia's father plans for her to marry an odious boy, Caspar. John Arlex, her father, is Warden of Incarceron but he refuses to tell her anything about its secrets. He only wants to use her as a pawn to achieve power.
At court there are many factions but Claudia does what she can to protect her tutor, Jared, and Finn, whom she believes is the rightful heir of the kingdom.
Faced-paced and exciting, this novel is a great fantasy for those who love suspense and plot twists.
Catherine Fisher's official webpage,
https://www.catherine-fisher.com/
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.
Katya is an Authenticities and Antiquities dealer in the far future where the details of life are recorded on Captures. She collects items before this time for their nostalgic value, ordinary things like typewriters and dictionaries.
She relies on her A.I. like many would really one a friend. That is why she find herself so unaccountably alone when her A.I. goes off-line.
Most of the novelette is Katya's experience of being kidnapped for three days by a strange masked man. He shows no empathy toward her during the three days she is "off line," but mysteriously he allows her to live to tell her tale.
This is one of the stories that leaves readers hunger for more, yet Kowal keeps some things shrouded in mystery.
This is a captivating SF/fantasy tale about how we construct memories and how we survive is both puzzling and thought-provoking.
"The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us...People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this crazy world of mazes...you don't know its happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is...When I was twelve years old, in 1964, Zephyr held about fifteen hundred people. There was the Bright Star Cafe, the Woolworth's, and a little Piggly-Wiggly grocery store...My hometown was probably a lot like yours."
Cory Jay Mackenson of Boy's Life
Jack and Jill's backstory, hinted at in Every Heat a Doorway, gets fully realized in Down Among the Sticks and Bones.
Their parents, Chester and Serena Wolcott, had children for the most selfish of reasons. When the twins weren't what they expected, Chester assigned them stifling gender roles. One of them he dresses as a tomboy, Jill, while the other, Jacqueline, he dresses in finery.
Unsurprisingly, what their father does has disastrous effects. When they reach the Moors, they reverse roles; Jack becomes self-sufficient and skilled in the sciences while Jill becomes the vain daughter of a vampire.
This is the 2nd part of the Wayward children series. Though it lacks the spark of the first part, it offers a wonderful depiction of the Moors.
There was still something unfinished around her eyes; she wasn't done yet. She was a story, not an epilogue.
Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire.
The Boxtrolls is a wonderful children's story that, among other things, show kids how awful it is to stereotype and scapegoat others.
Boxtrolls starts with a scenario that sounds a lot like many other dystopias. The above ground society, the Cheese Bits, are terrified of the underground society, the Boxtrolls.
The Boxtrolls literally live underground; They eat insects and use odds and ends from the world above them to make things like a music maker. A manhole is a portal to and from worlds.
Because they are terrified of the Boxtrolls, the Cheese bits and their secret police, the Red Hats, hunt the Boxtrolls as monsters. The White Hats, who govern the Cheese bits, support the Boxtrolls hunts. One of the Cheese bit, a baby, was kidnapped and killed by the Boxtrolls. But was the Trubshaw baby really taken?
Eggs doesn't think so. He knows the Boxtrolls aren't monsters. Eggs knows this because he lives with them, They are his friends who assure him his peach skin is fine even though theirs is green or grey.
Eggs feels ok about his appearance until a girl who lives above ground, Winne Portley-Rind, calls him a name he never heard before, "boy."
Two versions of the cover art from Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce
Joyce returns with another captivating fantasy. In Some Kind of Fairy Tale, a sixteen-year-old girl, Tara, creates havoc when she goes missing. Many suspect the teen-anger's boyfriend, Ritchie, including Tara's brother, Peter.
She and her boyfriend, Ritchie, have just fought after taking a walk in the Outwoods near Leicestershire. She runs off and he leave her there which is why many suspect him.
Tara returns twenty years later at Christmas time. She is ostensibly unharmed but relates a wild tale about being kidnapped by fairies.
Tara knows however that the beings are must more dangerous than storybook fairies. She believes one of them, Hiero, has even followed her from that other world.
Though no one believes her story about the bluebells, the crossing, and the other realm, she clings to this belief. Her psychiatrist and family members believe Tara has suffered trauma or else is an imposter. The only one who does believe her is the "mad" old lady whom everyone believe is a witch.
Joyce wonderfully mixes the plausible and the implausible in this fantasy. The theories presented by Vivian (Tara's psychiatrist) seem completely reasonable. One problem. Though Tara has been missing for twenty years, she has not aged a day.
Some of the scenes are empowering. In a wonderful scene, Tara gets the upper hand over her psychiatrist who has been patronizing her.
Though some threads of the plot are resolved nicely, the ending is problematic. As a reader, I was hoping Tara would become a true heroine instead of self-sacrificing one.
Written by two authors who write under one pen name, this young adult novel will resonate with teens.
Outsiders, Jenny and Ben, become unlikely friends when strange circumstances push them together. Jenny has always been able to feel and envision the past with her hands. She hides this condition behind gloves, but a Ouija board session forces her to confront her gift. Someone "out of time" is looking for her. Will she be able to protect her soul mate from the Order?
Endless was an enjoyable novel from start to finish. Readers will find the love triangle, and Ben, in particular, intriguing. Ben comes across as even more alluring than Jenny' out-of-time soul mate, Nikolai.
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.
