Although I can't comment on the iRiver Story, I do have the Cover Story. For anyone interested, these are my thoughts on it:
The technical specs were (for me) pretty much perfect. It was most definitely a purchase made on specs, rather than having the product in my hand prior to buying it. But I have a lot of niggles - which renders the device somewhat less than perfect...
First, the good stuff. DRM is not an issue - for me, at least. That is an Adobe thing, and I don't have any DRM'd PDFs. The device should handle most of the (normal) formats you can throw at it. It is touch screen, with WiFi.
But that's all. Forget the "Open Source" crap. Sure, it's linux. But the download link is an odd .jpg of the GNU preamble, with an iframe for the actual license text. The links to sources are odd javascript, pointing to old versions hosted god-knows where. I can't see the tool-chain and anything else required to actually compile a working binary. Not that that would help, because I haven't worked out how to gain root access - which you need to. The fonts installed are useless for anything other than standard US English (major complaint).
What else? Crap battery life. Turn off the WiFi, and you might get 24 hours of reading time (but I can't). I know some people complain about the touch screen, but I can live with that, just.
All in all, the average user should avoid this device like the plague. Hell, I'd even recommend the kindle above this, at least for usability (despite the kindle/1984 intrusion). *If* someone manages to write a HOWTO about jailbreaking it, and compiling user software (or iRiver have a more helpful attitude), then it *might* be an interesting toy. DRM on this device is so insignificant a problem that you can ignore it - I suspect that Google would not really want to promote this ability, anyway. It's the encrypted kernel firmware that gets my goat.