Rose's Reviews > The Raven Ring

this is the example of a good solid fantasy novel to me. old-timey setting, medium-size cast of characters starring a warrior, a wizard, and a thief, a good solid plot with a healthy dash of mystery and a little sprinkle of romance, a bit of humor, worldbuilding includes various races and cultures and lands but the focus is on one mountain warrior culture and one western-style human city, allusions to deeper lore... it's just perfect! i loved this as a child and i still love it as an adult

this book has set the standard for fantasy novels for me, and many books i try fall very short of that standard (so tempting to call out specific popular books and their failings here but i shall nobly resist). there's nothing particularly spectacular about this book that i can point to as striking, but there's nothing jarring about the setting, there's nothing weird about the writing style, there's nothing irritating about the characters. it's just good.

and a fun little tidbit, this time on rereading it i noticed the furniture (since i read a book about the history of furniture lately); i loved that our mountain warrior family has fewer stools than they have people in the family, it's a weird little detail but very plausible - most people throughout history had much less furniture than we think of as normal today, and often not everyone had somewhere to sit!