Movement 1: Earth

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Strangers from another world pull a band of friends from their ordinary lives on Earth into encounters with monsters, angels, mad scientists, and magic doors. The world may end, but the story is only beginning.

Six teenagers are bound together: A creative astronomer finds a crack in the sky. A determined gardener owns an immortal cat. A brave percussionist has been marked for death. An ingenious artist paints pictures of the future. An eccentric scientist dreams of a world of doors. A lonely girl on an island stays alive this time.

As an interdimensional journey is thrust upon them, they find both new worlds and new questions: How much do memories really matter? What is the price of a wish? Will their story, or any story, ever end? Why is The End a flower?

This slow-burning novel is the first installment in a lengthy and complex story about stories, memory, and the relentless pursuit of a happy ending at any cost.

Here are some things you might want to know:

- This series is fully complete. It is six books in length (around one million words), and I will post around 5k words per day until it is done. Should take maybe 5-6 months.

- This series is titled “Rough Draft,” for reasons unrelated to the number of revisions it has undergone.

- The initial inspiration for this story years ago was Homestuck; if you’re familiar with it you will notice some similarities, although these parallels diminish as the story progresses.

- Be aware that this story makes use of various font styles and color-coded text. Reading in dark mode might occasionally make things difficult.

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2025
Author: Mostly Not Marvelous

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 17
Views: 11,813

Reviews

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Community Reviews(3)

BessieSARoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I chose this book because I have read other books by this author and I enjoy his creativity and the incredible way he uses words. He obviously loves the English language, and he has a way of stringing words together that enables the reader to enter the story and feel a part of the narrative.
This is an involved fantasy tale about a group of friends and their experiences as the world comes to an end. A crack in the sky? What does that mean? Much more interesting than the normal way the world ends in most stories!
Each character is introduced with flair. The reader experiences their world for a brief moment: their motivations, their accomplishments, their passions. They are woven together in a tale that crosses the globe with the help of social media. The author has an interesting way of indicating each character through the color of their text messages.
I was drawn in by the underlying battle between good and evil. The characters of each are expressive and genuine and make the reader feel a part of the story and the ongoing struggle.
This story is exciting, the plot is a tangled web of relationships and survival and everything in between. A great read…..looking forward to book 2!!!
QwigRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I am on my second read-through of this series. I am enjoying it even more the second time through.
Personal highlights:
Well-crafted sentences. It's obvious that the author has a deep love for good words and well-crafted sentences. This feels like it could be a companion of the classic literature of old, except that it is set in the modern-day.
Thematic depth. This series is not made up of throw-away, one-use, have a good time novels. Rather the author invites us to grapple alongside the characters with deep themes that leave me straining toward the good and beautiful in the characters' world and grieving the broken and damaged.
Character relationships. There are many interesting, compelling characters with meaningful relationships. They make me smile, laugh, "awww," and get angry. Good stuff. (I gave the character category half a star off because there are a lot of characters and at some parts I found it hard to keep them all straight. But no complaints on character development.)
I'm reading it slower this time through, savoring the descriptive, vivid scenes and happily re-discovering our main band of friends and their idiosyncracys.
If there's something you don't understand towards the beginning of the series, hang tight! In all likeliness you will be having an "aha" moment later on. The foreshadowing is rampant.
Calor777Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I use the term "epic" more in a technical sense meaning large-scale and grand in scope, not in the more colloquial sense of "awesome", although I do feel like this story is awesome. The characters are very interesting. Any of them that feel "trope-y" are purposefully that way for the sake of the story/setting, but even these I found to be funny or engaging in their own ways. The drama between the characters is top notch, especially for a fantasy story.
I was fortunate to read the story beforehand, so I know where it goes and can appreciate the effective use of foreshadowing. And the meta play on story tropes is tastefully done. The author describes this book as a "slow-burn", but in my opinion it's very engaging world building and character setting (and I love me some good world building!). When major events start to happen, you care about the characters that are effected by these events.
My only potential negative is that there are frankly a lot of characters. 6 major characters (the teenage friends), plus a good handful of (relatively major) supporting characters. It's a lot to follow, but at the same time I feel like each one has an important place in the narrative. For some readers, it might be a bit hard to keep track of "who's who."
Still, this is the most enjoyable story I've read in a few years. I found myself shouting at some characters as I read, for me a good indication that a story has effectively hooked me.