drey's library

I really enjoyed the characters and the storyline in Caught in Crystal. This is classic fantasy, with a group of main characters, a quest, magic, baddies, and dusty traveling. I liked the main character, Kayl, who gave up a life of adventuring when she lost her closest friends to a warped magic on their last quest.Now she’s an inn-keeper with two children to care for and an overzealous provincial secretary to fend off. Then adventure comes a-calling again, and Kayl’s reluctance to go haring off gives way to caution when the Sisterhood’s enemies show up on her doorstep.What follows include on-the-road companionship – with the requisite squabbling and bickering, fighting off the baddies, and self-discovery of sorts. While mostly formulaic and some secondary characters barely get mentioned here and there, some parts were far from predictable and the actual quest itself was interesting. I wanted to know more about the black ooze and Corrana’s motivations, and Barthelmy and Glyndon get spare exposure considering how important they are to Kayl.The writing style is fluid, the overall tone dark. The world is vividly drawn, with very definite delineation of each of the races populating Lyra. Definitely worth checking out for the fantasy fans out there.drey’s rating: Pick it up!