Sometimes when you’re reading away, the characters do something so absolutely stupid you just have to shut the book. The hard snap can give a little of the satisfaction of a smack upside the head.
I had this feeling most recently while reading Cornelia Funke’s Inkspell this weekend. Meggie read the character of Orpheus into the Inkworld, a stupid, illogical move destined to do nothing but create trouble. Obviously she needed a new villain for the third book, but that was soooo obvious that it was painful. It insults the reader’s intelligence.
Inkspell was hard to get through in a number of ways. I kept falling asleep while reading it in the bath, and that almost never happens with a book I’m reading the first time. The series is oddly compelling though, and it’s been sneaking into my dreams. Once I awoke as the dream me was observing to someone, “The characters are knocking on the door, but they just can’t get out of the dream.”
A bit freaky, that.
Shawn L. Bird 
Happy Tuesday…