Book Review: Reckless

TITLE: Reckless
Book 1 in the new Reckless Trilogy
AUTHOR: Cornelia Funke
PUBLISHED: 2010
CATEGORY: Childrens
GENRE: fantasy, adventure
PREMISE: Jacob travels across a magical dangerous land to save his brother's life.
MY REVIEW: For those who haven't read Funke before who picked this up and were turned off I just want to say: please don't judge Funke by this book alone. She is normally ten times better then this. I honestly don't know what happened here. If you don't believe me, check out Thief Lord or Inkheart. I swear she's normally really good.
Which is why I'm puzzled by this book. It's not horrible persay. It does have Funke's trademark imagination overload that I love, and nonstop action but it lacked that certain something that made me addicted to the books I mentioned above. I think part of the trouble is she just jumps right into the story with little to no background so I found it hard to care about the characters and was pretty much confused throughout most of it. Now I think she's maybe going to explain more in the next two books but honestly, this did not help her story.
So I don't know. Maybe this was just a weak first book that's leading up to a better trilogy? I'll reserve judgement until I read the second book that comes out later this year, I believe. Honestly while it's a decent childrens read by other author's standards, I just expected much more from Funke.
WHO SHOULD READ: fantasy fans, younger teens
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five swords