Ink-Trilogy.

How real can a book actually be? We learn just how real a story can become in the Inkheart, Inkspell, and Inkdeath trilogy.

The first book tells the tale of a man named Mo and his twelve year old daughter, Meggie. Her whole life has been filled up with lies about where her mother has gone, and the peculiar happenings. But one night, when a mysterious man shows up at the house, Mo decides he can’t hide it anymore. Still, he keeps secrets to himself, and sets them off to an old aunt’s home. But there, on a day that changes the course of everything, Mo is taken by a group of henchmen who are apparently the men of Capricorn, a bloodthirsty ruler.

Meggie soon goes after her father with a little help, and realizes the truth of her past. Her father has a gift he’s been afraid of- one that can read characters out of books and humans into them without willpower. Throughout the novel, other book’s stories and characters are focused on, speaking of the way their lives are directed by the author constantly. And picked up in the second and third book, all our characters take a trip into the Inkworld, based around the land from the first book that’s described just as another book.

And this main book, in fact also named Inkheart, is where our hero’s are being read out of and into. So where do they all end up? That’s right: between the pages of the wretched book themselves. But with the story, comes the author. An old man named Fenoglio, who’s a simple writer who entertains his grandchildren. But of course, hearing the fascinating story of his creations coming to life, he springs up to see just what the truth of this all is.

Through the details of the art of reading fantasy into reality and a man who has created a world that leaps off and on the page, the idea of these protagonists being unreal is almost completely irrational to think. Their personalities, changing ways, and emotions are so vividly detailed that you forget that they, like the characters in Inkworld, are just created by an author’s mind.

My first experience with Inkheart was when I was only in fourth grade, and it’s been my favorite book for five years. And it was only, when completing the third and final book of the series at an age of fourteen, did I realize that I had not been with the characters, they were just names on a sheet of paper. But clearly, this book can influence one to appreciate reading even from a young age…