Some of the new characters are interesting — particularly Violante, the conflicted, ambitious daughter of the Big Bad, and her poorly-raised son. I’d love a more reasonably sized story about them. Most of the characters are boringly gold-hearted or black-hearted, though. Even Dustfinger becomes a totally dull (and far too powerful) white hat.

A lesson in “show, don’t tell” would also not have gone amiss (emphasis mine):

Without a word, he took her hand and drew her away from the tents, away from the robbers, and away from Resa, who was still standing by the fire. She was wiping the ink from her fingers, wiping and wiping, while Jasper watched sympathetically. It was as if she were trying to wipe away the words she had written.

No kidding, Lady MacBeth! We get it.

It is, in fact, the very definition of over-written. Boyfriend E asked me to explain “over-written” recently, in fact, and I should have just handed him Inkdeath. The simplest thing requires a whole paragraph or more of flowery description — often redundant description, as a new character sees for the first time a thing that we’ve already watched another character see, and has the same reaction to it. Madeleine Robins has a post up at DeepGenre in which she asserts that sometimes, cliches are the way to go: “[Y]ou have to give the reader a moment to rest from time to time. Simply using tried shorthand for an image or action can provide the reader that breathing space, even in the most beautifully written prose.” Yes, please.

A good editing process could have gone a long way in tightening these up. Each book could have been about half as long (or less) and told the same story better. If you’ve read Inkheart and want to know what happens next, just email me and I’ll give you the synopsis — there’s a better use for those hours.

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The story is complicated, but only rarely confusing: Nomiya devotes himself to the girl he paralyzed, but can’t bring himself to get back on the road; Togawa’s oldest friend Azumi works to get her driver’s license so she can drive him around; Togawa quits the wheelchair basketball team Azumi manages because the other players are too quick to use their handicaps as an excuse to go easy on themselves; Nomiya has repeated run-ins with his former teammates.

This is the first volume of a series, so few of the storylines resolve. I wish that the volume felt more self-contained, but it’s a minor quibble. This is a top-notch graphic novel — and I say that as someone who couldn’t care less about basketball or hot-shot boys. The action scenes on and off the court are gorgeously dramatic. I especially loved the characters’ faces: they’re deeply expressive, without overdoing it the way that manga sometimes does.

And these are people who have a lot to emote about. There are real issues here (uh, as the title would imply), and they’re handled with humor and sensitivity. One of my favorite sequences is a dream that one character has after a car accident hospitalizes him: his legs are bound with barbed wire, and they’re stretching away from him. He reaches out for his legs, but they aren’t attached to him anymore. I’m not paralyzed, so I obviously have no idea how it feels, but this scene is as evocative a depiction of paralysis as any I’ve seen.

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