Mage Smith (Epic Progression Fantasy)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The dragons will return to destroy the evil of this world!

Melissa is the daughter of a blacksmith. Born into the dragon cult with an important destiny. She is used to people’s jealousy, their quiet contempt and her mother treating her as a possession. But she still dreams of another life for herself. A life beyond Windbrook, the cult, and her parents.

She wants to see the land beyond, on the other side of the mountains. Where shadows lurk and the dragon forge burns hot in the evenings. She dreams of becoming a mage smith, but to get there; Mel needs to choose…

…To fulfill her destiny or to carve her own path?

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Release schedule is once a week on Fridays.

Patreon is currently at 15 chapters ahead.

Thank you for your time and for giving my story a try. Reviews and ratings are deeply appreciated.

Cover Art by: AngeredSparrow

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2023
Author: AsterMarsh

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.0/ 5.0
Followers: 122
Views: 100,209

Chapters(126 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(3)

KombartRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This is a slow burn and there is not really a lot of progress within the first few chapters, tho the pacing is still quite good in my opinion. It has some slice of life, but doesn't go too far with it either.
The story itself strikes some cool ideas so far with current and future plotlines already established early on. It is more like traditional fantasy than most other stories on royalroad, but that gives it a kind of serenity that makes this very enjoyable to read.
The world, while interesting and magical, feels a bit small at the moment, but that is kind of explained by the worldbuilding and I believe that our mc will seek out the unknow in the future which will give a lot of opportunity to expand on this.
Prose, conversations and characters are generally good, but it doesn't always flow or feel perfect. Sidecharacters tend to be a bit too one-dimensional or over the top, but it is still quite readable.
In general this feels like a story, that is written by an inexperienced author, so there are some rough edges. But the core of the story is interesting and new and despite its flaws it is still quite enjoyable to read.
So if the synopsys of the story caught your interest, then I would recommend to give it a try.
DagrvirRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Style
While the story started out at really slow paced especially compared with other works on royal road, it does pick up in pace after [book one]. Because of that I feel that book one is more like an extended prologue rather than a complete book despite the fact that enough is in it to qualify it as a book by itself.
Character
With the current set up of three main characters, I had to lose half a star in my review because I genuinely don't remember one of the characters name or anything really personal about him aside from where he's from and his current occupation(s?) Which makes him feel kind of shallow. Mel and Austin feel a lot more fleshed out though.
Story
The writing started out with a fresh enough concept that I wanted to see where it would go and I'm not entirely disappointed. The author seems to be improving their storytelling as the story progresses, getting out of the finer details that people may not quite care for and leaning in to more clear plot progressions with each chapter that make it more interesting to read. Towards where I'm currently at in the story (end of book 2) I had a hard time stopping before bed because it felt like something was always happening. I needed to know what happened next.
Overall I would be more likely to recommend this to someone who is more acclimated to conventional books and stories than to someone who already uses royal road for litrpgs or other stories that carry a heavy influence from Chinese cultivation webnovels.
luda305Royal Road
★★★ 3.0
I think there are two major issues that prospective readers should consider before reading this book.
First, it's not an epic progression. It seems mostly to be a young adult coming of age story. A teenager anxious about and trying (but failing) to escape her destiny. Bad romance between teenagers. Sure, assuming this story follows the hero's journey (which is a big assumption, and not at all clear even after 12 chapters due to the glacial pace), then she might get stronger at some point in order to overcome the enemy in the climax, but that's a feature of all such stories; progression implies frequent increases in power, and potentially that such increases are the main plot.
Second, the fantasy elements and worldbuilding in general are pretty haphazard. A lot of this is word choice, where a modern word is used that doesn't really make sense in context. Backback. Chocolate. Etc.
On a final note, I'm not sure if this is a broader theme that continues, but the first dozen chapters seem needlessly cruel to the protagonist.
She's trying to escape her small town and her destiny. And the story begins with her receiving a rejection letter from the magic academy, which had been plan A to escape. Her plan B is then to just run away and wing it. That fails, hard, and she get's pretty depressed. Then her destiny is revealed in a ceremony and (surprise) they have a letter of acceptance to that same magic academy.
Honestly, that's pretty cruel. And while that's about where I dropped the story, I'm confused about why we even spent so much time faffing about in this small town on these failed plans to escape. Like, presumably we're going to leave the town for the magic academy and everything there is going to be moot for a long time, if ever again. And what was the point of these failed plans to escape other to illustrate how the protagonist is a bit of a fuck-up (which she of course has significant anxiety for).