The Inkheart Trilogy is three books, Inkheart, Inkspell, and Inkdeath- written by Cornelia Funke.  I’m reviewing them together because I made a huge mistake in not reading them together and spent way too much time backtracking and cross referencing characters to understand the storyline.  This should warn you, there is a HUGE cast of characters- like Lord of the Rings huge, by the time the last book rolls around, most of the story is, wrapping up most of the story.   

The trilogy revolves around a secret Mortimer has been keeping from his daughter Meggie.  When he reads aloud, he brings the characters out of the book into this life.  Unfortunately, every character he reads out of the book must be replaced by a character from his own life, and one night while reading aloud the book Inkheart, three characters appear and Meggies mother and two cats disappear.  Nine years later, one of the characters appears on Mortimers doorstep willing to do anything it takes to return back into his bookworld.  Great premise right?  and it’s an equally great read.  Inkheart can almost be read alone and be totally satisfying, as long as you don’t care what happens to some of the more minor characters. 

Without giving away too much of Inkspell, the second book- I enjoyed it almost more then the first.  I loved discovering the world of Inkheart, and this book satisfied that D&D geek in me.  It was chalk full of fairies and witches, and all manner of villains, you totally understand Dustfinger’s(one of the characters read out of the book by Mortimer) longing to return.  I also loved watching Dustfinger develop as a character- you go from hating to loving to hating to loving him.  This is the book where you also realize there’s more then one hero to the story, and although Meggie is still central to the storyline- it turns from a story that could be read to the 9-12 year old set, into a total young adult novel.

This brings me to Inkdeath- which should not be read by anyone younger than teenage age.  This is one of the reasons the last book upset me so much- it turns Meggie from the heroine into only a very minor player.  It almost felt like the author was trying to find a role for her- and she goes from being the savior to the bookworld to a little girl trapped in a not very well developed love triangle.  I was so upset that so many things about Meggie that were hinted at in Inkspell, never came to fruition.  I was also incredibly upset that this was billed as a trilogy, and then the ending was clearly left open for another book.  The book is incredibly lengthy- and yet the entire ending of the story feels crammed into the last 50 pages of the book.  More characters are introduced- more twists and turns for development, and then it very abruptly ends without really finishing the story.

So read the books, but be prepared to be satisfied by an ending to the trilogy, that is not wholly satisfying.