Reiffen's Choice (Stoneways Trilogy Series #1) Book

I liked this book. It was a good read after the confusion of Crystal Rain. While some of it felt like a rip off of Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time, in general I felt like it had enough differences and conflict to keep it interesting.

Setting: Nothing too interesting here, for me. Didn't seem much different from any of the hundreds of other fantasy books out there. The author spent a bit too much time, in my opinion, giving meaningless descriptions of the surroundings. The dwarf caves were interesting and different, however.

Plot: This was basically the standard journey plot structure, and even included the archetypal underground passage that indicates new discovery and transition from youth to adult - typical bildungsroman in that sense. However, the one who seemed to have changed and grown the most, indeed the one who the story is about, is the one being rescued. Very interesting. The story was set up nicely for the next book in the series. I am actually interested in reading more.

Conflict: Pretty good. Lots of stuff going on with the main plot. There seemed to be a couple subplots that have been set up for the series, but nothing else really stood out in this book. This made the the book feel a bit simplistic, but still interesting.

Character: I liked way the various raced were represented differently than in other books I've read. Indeed, it seems strange that nobody else has had dwarves that seem literally as hard and heavy as stone. I was a bit thrown off by the opening with the bear, and thought it was a bit of a cheat to hide his shapeshifting and talking a secret for awhile, but it was different enough to keep me reading. Reiffen had some good internal conflicts that made things interesting. I found the use of Ferris as the POV for most of the book a bit strange, especially since the author took a couple opportunities to move around viewpoint using the omniscient viewpoint. I would have liked more moving in and out, since that is the reason why someone would use omniscient in the first place.