★★★★★ Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke, Brendan Fraser (narrator)
A little more conventional than Inkheart
Inkspell
Cornelia Funke, Brendan Fraser (narrator)
A little more conventional than Inkheart
I joined audible.com and began listening to audiobooks in 2004. Among the first were Cornelia Funke's Inkworld trilogy. They were very good -- good books, but also very well read. And since the series is about the magic of reading aloud, this is appropriate. Recently, however, I learned that Inkworld is no longer a trilogy. A fourth novel, Die Farbe der Rache (The Color/Ink/Dye of Revenge -- the German title is a pun that doesn't translate) has recently been published. Wanting to read it, I decided I would first go back and re-listen to the first three books.
Inkspell is, in my opinion, both better than Inkheart and not quite as good. It is better in that the Inkspell narrator, Brendan Fraser, is in my opinion more versatile than Inkheart narrator Lynn Redgrave. Don't get me wrong: Redgrave is very good -- I would have no criticism of her, had I not heard Fraser's narration. On listening to Inkspell I realized that everyone in Redgrave's narration sounds European. Although some of Fraser's characters sound European, he gives Mortola a Russian accent, and Fenoglio sounds like a New Englander -- it's weird, but it works. A new character, Orpheus, sounds like a Southern Baptist preacher, and it absolutely 100% works!
Now, I realize that to many Europeans American accents are the worst of all sounds that anyone ever has heard or ever will hear. If you're one of these people, you will not like Fraser. So there could be two opinions on the narrator, but I thought Fraser excellent.
The disappointing thing about Inkspell is that it's a more conventional fantasy than Inkheart. Inkheart takes place entirely in our world. Some of the characters are fictional characters from the novel Inkheart who have been read out into our world. And some real-world characters get read into Inkheart, even spending years there.
Inkspell, in contrast, takes place mostly in the fictional world of Inkheart. And Inkheart, as written by Fenoglio, is a fairly conventional fantasy novel in a fairly conventional fantasy world. (Sorry, Fenoglio.) The real distinctiveness of the Inkworld is the sorcery of writing and reading that Funke invented. That is there in Inkspell, but the world is, by and large, like other technologically backwards sort-of-medieval fantasy worlds you have read about. I found this disappointing.
But only a little. Inkspell is still an excellent fantasy novel, very well read.