Book Review: Reckless

Spooky AND pretty! I like it!

For years, Jacob Reckless has been secretly disappearing to another world, a world behind a mirror, a world for which his father abandoned his family. The mirror world is Jacob's escape from reality. It's a place for treasure hunts and magnificent quests. A world where witches haunt the forests and giants and dwarfs roam. A world locked in a deadly war.

Jacob's secret seems safe, until one day his younger brother Will follows him, with disastrous consequence. Faced with a curse that is quickly turning Will to stone, the Reckless brothers are thrust into a race against time to find a cure before Will is lost forever.

Inspired by the Brothers Grimm, master storyteller Cornelia Funke introduces a lush, enchanting world where fantasy meets reality. Reckless is a thrilling adventure, a tale of heroism and loyalty, filled with danger, mystery, and magic--with fairy tales and legends re-imagined as never before. - Goodreads

I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Reckless ever since I saw - and missed my chance to acquire - ARCs at BEA last May. Cornelia Funke is one of my favorite authors and in the first book of this new series, she hasn't disappointed me.

The Good: Funke maintains her well earned reputation for world building, blending European history with an abundance of fairytales, making this new world eerily familiar and frightening. Like the Ink series, Funke has taken a typical tool for crossing into new worlds - in this case, a mirror - and made it her own, wrapping it in its' own mystery.

One of my favorite tricks from Cornelia Funke is how she lets us into the minds of the major players, and even some of the side ones, to help reveal motivations and back stories piece by piece. I loved how she did it in the Ink World Series, and it's no less effective in Reckless. Everyone has their own voice and their own small but crucial part to play, and Funke let's us see the world through their eyes. It's confusing sometimes, but it pays off in establishing the roles and species of the characters, and the world through their eyes.

The story unveils slowly, but compellingly. While I enjoyed the first couple of chapters, I didn't realize how deeply I was hooked until I tried to put it down. It's a long book, which can get irritating if, like me, you've got a lot of other books to read. But it's a surprisingly quick read for its size, and I've been quietly longing for the next book since I finished it months ago.


The Bad: I have no idea when the sequel is coming out and I need it like Emma needs Nutella.

The Rest: Cornelia Funke's writing style tends to lean slightly towards info dumps, but 1) I kind of like info dumps if they're done well, and 2) Cornelia Funke can write good info dumps. Be warned, this is the first book in a series, so if you just want a stand alone book to wallow in before putting it down and moving on, hold off on this one.As a reader, I was drawn into the characters just enough to become invested in their futures and intrigued by their pasts and mysteries, but the book drops off just as those mysteries become even more devious and compelling.

Final Verdict: If you like fantasy and cliff hangers, this is a book for you. If you don't like cliff hangers, wait for the rest of the series to be published and then lose yourself in another fabulous Funke world.

Rating: 4.5/5 Mushrooms

The Wizard Has No Heart for Inkheart

Inkheart tells the tale of Mo and Meggie Folchart, a father and daughter team of bookbinders. Mo and Meggie’s lives are quiet ones until, on one of their travels for Mo’s job, the past catches up to them. Dustfinger, an acquaintance of Mo’s from years before, comes to pursued Mo to give him something – a book – before Capricorn finds Mo and collects the book and Mo himself. As these people with strange names begin to invade her and her fathers lives, Meggie not only finds herself in situations she’s only read about before, but discovers that there is more going on between the covers of a book than just what’s written on the page.

Inkheart is cast as close to perfectly as I’ve ever seen in a book adaptation. Eliza Bennett and Helen Mirren are Meggie and Elinor, and Paul Bettany as Dustfinger surprised me as the movie progressed with his ability to capture his characters desperation. Andy Serkis is not Capricorn from the book but is still an interesting and compelling villain. The scenery is not as stunning as in Narnia or the Harry Potter movies - the movie doesn’t require such a grand scale as most of the conflict is among the characters – but it fits the tone of the movie and doesn’t detract from the action. Nevertheless, Inkheart is why books should never be made into movies.

I was anticipating that Inkheart wouldn’t be the same story I loved. I anticipated that Meggie and Mo’s powers would be out in the open from the very start to save time. I anticipated a plot and characters completely different from the books’, carrying only the title, the names of my beloved characters. I anticipated a completely different story, fitted together with a few chopped up key plot points that bared a vague resemblance to the book. I was braced for everything but what I got.

Inkheart is the result of when studios listen to fans when they say they want a straight adaptation of the book – or at least as close an adaptation as they can get. It doesn’t work and Inkheart illustrates perfectly why. All the thoughts and emotions the characters feel, and the memories and events which prompt them, are too numerous and complex to move easily to screen. And in stories such as this, which are epic and fantastical in nature, it ends up feeling trite and kitschy.

In one attempt to condense some of the more superfluous parts of the book, The Wizard of Oz was used to fill the role of several other less famous books. This sounds good in theory. In fact, it sounds brilliant in theory, considering the parallels in both books about people traveling to different worlds. In practice, however, it falls flat of being meaningful or inventive and instead feels contrived and cheesy.

In short, the movie tries too hard to be the book; it follows the plot almost exactly, but the few changes they make are ones which change the mood and attitudes of characters in ways which damage the story rather than enhance it.

Inkheart is based on the book of the same name by Cornelia Funke, author of The Thief Lord, The Dragon Rider, and the Inkheart Trilogy, Inkheart, Inkspell, and Inkdeath. And as always, this is in my college newspaper.