[Story] Where the Dragons Went: Book 1 – No Peace Without Violence

Title: Where the Dragons Went: Book 1 – No Peace Without Violence
Author: ImSoAwesome
Genre(s): Action, Adventure, Drama
Tags: Fantasy, Anti-Hero Lead, Female Lead, Grimdark, High Fantasy, Magic, Multiple Lead Characters (excluded non tag)
Audience: – (contains Profanity, Traumatizing content)
Main Lead: Female, Male
Status: Ongoing
VB Assessment Score: PDE 2 CDD 3 SWB 3 || TQ 3 SV 3 || Overall: 14
Number of Chapters: 11
Chapter Length: Medium-Long (most long except for one notably shorter)
Reading Level: High
Date of First Release: December 1, 2020
Date of Last Update: December 30, 2020
VB Reviewed? No
Available on Platform(s): Royal Road
Number of Views: 680
Number of Reviews: 3
Synopsis:
You didn’t disobey God when he told you to save the world. You just didn’t.
That was why Margery Silverwither left home, why she joined the House of Heroes, why she sought to stop the Night Order and their bloody quest to free their people from years of oppression. It was the only way. She had to do as God commanded and put those filthy corpses where they belonged: in the ground.
When a chance mission with her new team has her protecting a noble house from the invasion of Night Order agents, Margery quickly comes to learn the world is not as simple as she thinks. That the lines between good and evil might be more blurry than she’d ever known. That destiny might not be so absolute.
But it had to be. This was God’s will. This was her destiny. It had to be.
Right?

Review(s)

Jack0fHeart: This story is extremely well-written with very realistic characters. It follows the story of a party of heroes and begins with the final member joining their group, Margery. She’s a spoilt princess born with a silver spoon in her mouth with a fiery temper and confrontational personality, but wields magic that is toxic and harmful for her people. She’s immediately dislikeable as you’d expect from a spoilt brat who expects money and privelege to give her anything she demands. I look forward to seeing her character develop into becoming a decent person.
The other characters are each flawed in their own way with a depth and mystery I’ve rarely seen in hard-copy fantasy novels, let alone on Royal Road. 
My favorite character without a doubt, is Toothless. He’s a mute with a mysterious past, from a race of people likened to walking corpses. He comes from extreme poverty while living in a city that persecutes his people for their unique characteristics. Despite being a hero, he is still forced to be homeless as even the inns have restrictions onto the buildings he can enter. 
I recommend reading this to anyone who enjoys high-magic fantasy worlds.

assasin: For full disclosure this was done as part of a review swap.
The characters are definitely charismatic. They each have well defined personalities wthe tone of how they’re written is consistant. There’s enough hint at their motivations to let me want to know more about them without leaving me confused as to why they think joining the guild is a good idea. 
Both Margery and Zahuna have their blindspots; but those blindspots don’t undermine their good qualities. Margery is naive yet determined. And Zahuna is stoic despite her inexperience. Both characters have plenty of room for development.
Some of the sentences tend to run on. But other than that I didn’t spot any obvious grammar issues. Of course it’s one of the areas where I’m a bit shaky myself. So I might have missed things. 
Style checks most of the boxes. Chronology is clear and perspectives don’t switch randomly. My only complaint is the prose is a bit purple. Description is good; but too much description wrecks the pacing of a story. It’s not unreadable. But I found myself skimming at times.
The story is engaging. But still quite early. I definitely think it has potential. Of course I’m a sucker for fish out of water culture clashes. Especially ones regarding different social classes. So you miles may vary. 

Ehbon: Reviewed after beta-reading (with the help of several others) the whole thing as a google doc, including that which has yet to be placed upon this site. I will upgrade this to an advanced review after the first book is on here in its entirety.
Mornbringer is a character-driven story, as the first book in what I believe is intended as a series it does a wonderful job of introducing characters who are then broken down and transformed over the course of the book into something more. The main characters feel very much like people, and despite what some of them think about themselves, they’re ordinary ones. This goes for the side characters and the antagonists too, everyone that is introduced in this story feels like an actual person in a way I struggle to describe. Each of them encounters hardships both mental and physical, and while some overcome those obstacles and come out the other side better for it… others don’t. The main trio start this story as a bunch of clueless kids in way over their heads who are trying to become heroes (mercenaries of great courage who try to make the world a better place, for the purposes of this tale) and end it as a group of heroes who understand just what it means to actually be what they were striving to become in the first place. 
For the sake of spoilers, I will avoid talking in specifics about the story itself, but there is everything from adventure to intrigue in here and all of it was crazy fun to read my way through. By the end I was left wondering just which side in the major conflict taking place in the background between two major powers were the good guys, because both have done terrible things either to change the status quo or to maintain it. More importantly, neither seem to be making the world a better place with their warring. 
As for setting, Where The Dragons Went as a whole takes place in a gritty, harsh, high-fantasy world that at times reminded me of what you might see in The Witcher books albeit less dark. Magic and magical creatures exist, but their intricacies aren’t well-known by the inhabitants and both seem somewhat rare. The magic itself seems to be limited to different kinds of racial magic, with each of the various magically inclined peoples of the world having access to different abilities. 
This first book is 18 chapters, or just over 100,000 words, long and I highly encourage anyone that likes this sort of tale to give it a try. 

Story Post Last Updated: December 31, 2020