Book 3: Review

                Inkheart by Cornelia Funke and Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich are two very different stories pursuing very separate themes, but they’re both still stories about struggle and work. Meggie was trying to live until tomorrow and help her father while Stephanie was attempting to capture a few hard-to-find F.T.A.’s, but they both required tremendous strength from the main characters. Finding out your father can read characters and objects out of books? Not exactly the same as being short on money and taking on whatever cases can from your sleazy cousin Vinny, but both are hard. And both books provide very good reminders on how this is a part of life. They give the reader a reminder that anyone can overcome the greatest of struggles if they try hard enough and utilize their support network.

                In Inkheart, without giving too much away, you see fantasy elements arise. Meggie reads Tinkerbell and the Tin Soldier out of books, her father read her mother into one, and these are clearly things you don’t see in life. But is this story really about the fantasy? The ability to read oneself into a book? No. At the end of the day what Meggie and her father were fighting for was family. They both did it in their own separate ways, with words, weapons, fire, and intelligence. Stephanie Plum was also fighting for family in a way. Mo was an integral part of the Burg community she grew up in. Mo was like that favorite uncle to many of the kids in the area and seeing him in a bad situation was hard for every member of the Burg. These familial struggles (or the struggles of those who feel like family) are hardly new. Everyone goes through hard times and everyone has the ability to get through them if they fight for what they want to get out of life and these books really showed you that.

                Inkheart dealt with this matter in such a way that the reader sees how a mother’s disappearance internally impacts the child. While this is an almost cliché way to look at this theme, you can also see the stress in Mo’s life. Yes there is action. Yes there is fantasy. It’s hard to not see those elements and it’s hard to have them not completely overtake the story. But boil the book down. Remove the plot, unnecessary characters, literary genius (or failures), and what have you got left over? The theme. And the theme of this novel is family and what happens when you lose someone close to you. It doesn’t matter how the family member is lost, when you really think about it. Divorce, death, they left, you left, it doesn’t matter because it still hurts and it takes time to heal and recover. Trying to “reunite” your family, as Inkheart explores, is a different struggle altogether and it’s a struggle that can drive people apart or pull them closer. Inkheart also looks at the perspective of a child in these situations and how they cope. Meggie read. “There was another reason Meggie took her books whenever they went away. They were her home when she was somewhere strange. They were familiar voices, friends that never quarreled with her, clever, powerful friends -- daring and knowledgeable, tried and tested adventurers who had traveled far and wide. Her books cheered her up when she was sad and kept her from being bored.” Books became her family when Mo was driving or when her mother was gone.

                Three to Get Deadly (or TtGD from here on) explores the struggle of a family member doing something stupid or getting into trouble (which can actually be the same thing). Moses Bedemier, a well-liked and a respected member of the Burg community got into some trouble. And when a member from the Burg gets in trouble, everyone in the Burg will try to help them get out of it… By refusing it ever happened or what they did wasn’t wrong. A part of the family aspect TtGD explores is the aspect where everyone knows that the job must be done. Something needs to change and it needs to change now, but it’s family you’re dealing with.  As Stephanie so elegantly put it, “I make lots of mistakes. I try hard not to make the same mistake more than three or four times…” is what everyone wants to hear. It’s expected that someone will try their best to change their life and getting them to do that can be the real struggle. Showing this can be important to many people as it’s a very real problem people have to deal with. Getting through to someone can be one of the greatest feelings in the world and that’s the type of hope many people need in their lives.

                All in all, Inkheart and TtGD were both very good books and appealed to me in different ways. If you were to use a rating scale of 1-10 (because I’m lame like that) Inkheart landed at a solid 6. If you take into consideration the audience it was intended for (i.e. not 16 year old high school sophomores) it would be rated higher, but at this point I really appreciate writing style more than I used to. As much as I love Cornelia Funke and her books, it’s just aimed for a less advanced audience.  Three to Get Deadly lands more at a 7 due to the humor factor and the reliability factor in the way Stephanie lives and acts (due to the fact that it’s very similar to the way I live oops). Overall they were fairly decent books.