Translated by Anthea Bell from the German title Tintenblut, this middle book of the trilogy inverts the first installment’s flow of characters from book to reality, sending most of its real-world characters into the world of the book.

He may have limitations as a actor, but as an audiobook reader he has a voice and even a dialect for every character.Īs for Funke, the peril and magic of Inkworld still speak for themselves. And though on film I have never been impressed when he attempted to play anything but a vanilla blockbuster hero (see The Mummy, etc.), I was surprised by the versatility of his reading voice. One of the ironies of my reconciliation with the series is that Brendan Fraser read the audiobook that brought me back into the Inkworld. Even though Funke intended Fraser to play her hero from the moment she conceived the character, the fact that the film effectively burned any possibility of a sequel somehow turned me against reading the rest of the trilogy. Part of this has to do with the movie based on Inkheart starring Brendan Fraser as Mo and Andy Serkis as the villain Capricorn.

I read and loved the book, I say, yet I didn’t read its sequel until now. Several years ago I read and loved the book Inkheart, the first novel in a trilogy by the same name, featuring a bookbinder named Mo (sometimes known as Silvertongue) and his daughter Meggie, both of whom have the power to summon characters out of stories by reading them aloud – and who sometimes, even inadvertently, send real people like Meggie’s mother into the world where the story takes place.

Inkspell by cornelia funke