Inkheart (by Cornelia Funke)

I would not have finished this if not for the Read Harder Challenge and its "genre fiction in translation" category.  This is the first book in a well-regarded trilogy by German writer Cornelia Funke, about a world where those with talent can read characters into and out of books. 12-year-old Meggie has a father who has this talent, he's on the run from characters he has released from books, and adventure ensues.

The main issue I had with this book: the main villains. We are told they are is awful and sadistic, and love inflicting pain on people. This group captures our heroes -- including six different people and an animal -- on two separate occasions, and does literally nothing to harm them. The heroes even get to share rooms. After about a third of the novel you realize that there are no stakes, because nothing actually bad is ever going to happen. So when the heroes escape and get recaptured and escape again and get recaptured, it's not only that the novel is going in plot circles, it's that there's no tension whatsoever.

Also the world of the titular novel Inkheart, which is supposed to be so great, is not really well-drawn or interesting. The villains are boring. The world is boring.

People love this book and this series, but it is emphatically Not For Me and I was glad to be done with it.