Warmage: A Progression Fantasy

Information

Status

Ongoing

Year

2022

Author

Rising Myth

• Warmage up on YONDER!
  Jan 27, 2023
• Chapter 10
  Apr 10, 2022
• Chapter 9
  Apr 9, 2022
• Chapter 8
  Apr 8, 2022
• Chapter 7
  Apr 7, 2022
• Chapter 6
  Apr 7, 2022
• Chapter 5
  Apr 5, 2022
• Chapter 4
  Apr 4, 2022
• Chapter 3
  Apr 3, 2022
• Chapter 2
  Apr 2, 2022
• Chapter 1
  Apr 2, 2022
• Part 1 - Shadow of the Titans
  Apr 2, 2022

Reviews

Community Reviews(10)

• J.M. Clarke (U Juggernaut)Royal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  So far, I am loving this story.
  Warmage is shaping up to an action and training oriented coming-of-age story with measured progression so far. Just the way I like it. Note that I review subjective standpoint. I say what I liked subjectively, and then you can judge from there.
  Characters
  The book stars Shaya, literally larger-than-life mage and warrior in training, who kinda caught me with her...how can I put it...initiative. So far she's been shown she can put together tactics, but she doesn't hesitate to wreck face when faces need wrecking.
  And hell, I could get behind that.
  The other characters so far are developing, but I've liked what I've seen. Haven't found anybody annoying yet.
  Style
  The style kinda is what pulled me in. When I read I like a more descriptive style that immerses me in the world. This really feels like a good crossroads with 'fast-paced and letting the audience build the images themselves' and adding enough meat to sink my teeth into.
  Story
  One thing I look for in beginnings is how much is introduced while drawing me. So far a lot of the story has been unfolding at a nice rate, introducing the magic system, Shaya and her brother's background, their family history, her training have all unfolded with some nice fighting so far too. Kinda my favourite way to do things. :)
  Grammar
  I didn't exactly have my Chicago Guide of Style open beside me, but I noticed no distractable errors.
  And that's it. So far it's shaping up to be solid on all columns, and if it keeps this up, I think I'm in for a treat. I hope you will be too. :) Give it a try!
• BarokRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  So, where to beginn
  First of all, I think that is a great story. It's engaging, you don't want to stop. The characters are beliveable and consistent in the little I have read so far, and Grammar is also pretty good.
  What I didn't like was the time skip that is pretty early on, but that is just my humble opinion, and it's not overly annoying,  I just don't like them in general.
  My Fazit is, it has huge potential to become something pretty big, with the world, and magic to explore,  with different Monsters and Enemy's,  and I am here to enjoy the ride XD
• Youngish OldsterRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  This one has been working its way up my 'must read' list over the last few weeks.
  Shaya is a great character, as are all of her Lance-mates (i.e., squad) & others in the story.  They're smart, talented, committed, real & funny.  They grow, learn, change, gain respect for each other, deal with each others crap & issues, and fall in lust (& maybe love?) in ways that seem organic and believable.  Their dialog, banter, shit-talking & pranking are a great counterbalance to the dangerous, treacherous & sometimes grim situations the academy keeps sending them into.
  It's clear the world around them is corrupt, unforgiving, brutal, and increasingly spinning out of control.  The world-building handles this really well by integrating what we learn into their missions, interactions with academy leaders, families, imperial inquisitors, etc.  It seems likely that internal corruption as well as potent external dangers are going to lead to situations where Shaya & co. will need to question their allegiances and maybe even burn their empire down to save it (and themselves...)  The gradually building tensions get revealed in interesting & non-obvious ways, giving us readers fun scenarios to speculate about.
  I've gotta say:  there's a pub-crawling night during which Shaya discovers she's a lot more predictable than she thinks she is which may be the single funniest thing I've read this year.  Despite getting her ego deflated, she still comes out ahead, which is a great twist.  Just one example of the excellent writing in this tale.
  Oh yeah- the missions & fight scenes are excellent too.  😎
  Read this if you aren't already.  It's good & getting better as it goes.
• SnakefistRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Update at chapter 62
  Another twenty chapters, another arc, and I thought I should give a small update. I liked this third arc a lot more than the second. It had less exposition and a lot more action and adventure. I think there was a bit more setup for the future conflict in the world outside of the Academy. All in all, a great arc. But I still think that the first arc didn’t really work that well with the rest of this book, and I don’t really feel that invested in her journey in the Academy. And it’s not because the latest two arcs have been badly written or anything like that, just that the outside world seems so interesting and the potential conflicts intriguing, that I don’t care about classes, tests, training, bullies, or the protagonist learning about magic. On the other hand, it should mean that future arcs are going to be even better than previous, but I wish that the author picked up the pace a little bit, just so we can get to the interesting parts a bit quicker.
  Lore and worldbuilding is getting pretty deep, so deep in fact that I wish there is a chapter dedicated to it. Just short descriptions about gods, races, and all of the side characters. This is a web novel; I can’t remember something that was mentioned a month ago.
  Original review at chapter 41.
  Oh man, I hate reviewing books like this. Books that are really well written, but for some reason do not work that well. Let’s start from the beginning.
  The first twenty chapters are something that I can describe only as an overly long prologue. It’s the foundation for the story that has yet to start. Now, don’t get me wrong, those chapters are very well written, but it was neither the time nor the place for those chapters. There is information on how magic works, but why is it there when she is heading to the Magic Academy. There is information on how the world works, but again, why is it there when she is going to be surrounded by people from all over the Empire and we can learn about it while the main c
• IllthylianRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  While the pace is a little bit more brisk than I care for, it's also far slower than many people trying to write 'progression' fictions, which is always nice to see.  The character starts at the bottom, but with bloodline-benefits and powerful parents which pass on abilities or inherent strength, allowing the character to instantly have a bit of an advantage once they press the right buttons over the average citizen.  And from there, of course, they just get stronger and stronger as time passes.  However, gratefully, this is a process that is both quick-paced in terms of chapters covering important events and then moving on, while still taking enough time that we're not dealing with someone going from worthless to master-mage within five chapters.  A time skip very much helps with this, and its done well so as to get over a bunch of the 'boring' middle ground without issue.
  The characters all have good banter, and there's some genuinely well written exchanges between the MC and her trainer, parent, rivals, etc.  Tough, but not invincible.  Obviously a bit better than everyone (kinder than others, and thus ends up saving a princess; more humble than others, thus is a better person and entitled to more respect) and it still reads a little fantastical, but grounded enough that you still believe they've earned the benefits they're getting and rewards they're reaping.  Stylistically and grammatically, there's also no real errors in syntax or spelling, and the paragraphs are split and flow nicely into one another.
  All and all, I'd happily read more and plan on doing so when I'm not so crunched for time by the review-challenge.  This grabbed me and held my attention and made me want more, and I'll be back for that 'more' for sure.  But even as early in as I am now, definite congratulations are in order for the world being built and the people inhabitting it.  Definite inspirations felt from other works in a similar vein.
• gln9Royal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Sadly this went on hiatus, but I'll take that point in time to review this story.
  This is probably one of my favourite stories on RR. Let me explain why.
  Style:
  Very well written. Not overly simplistic, not unneccessarily complicated. Overall excellent use of vocabulary. This is a joy to read.
  Grammar:
  I hardly remember there ever having been an issue there. Again, very well written.
  Story:
  I love the world that you have built. Not a transmigrator or a system apocalypse story, and in fact no "system" as you'd normally call that at all. There are schools of magic, but no classes, levels, or the like. Any growth in power is the result of learning, training and experience, not of grinding XP, making this more enjoyable and relatable, while at the same time preventing the powercreep that plagues so many system-bound stories. The setting of this world is far enough removed from ours to be fantastical, strange and fascinating to experience, but still relatable enough to make sense. I don't want to spoil any parts of the actual story, but I thoroughly enjoyed the adventures of our MC and find what happens to make sense. Special shoutout to the variety of weapons and their utilization and the magic applications portrayed - those are especially well done!
  Characters:
  Almost five stars, because I think the variety of personalities, the motivations displayed and the quirks shown is all excellent. Even the dislikable characters are well written, which is something few get right. The only reason this hasn't a perfect rating is essentially just how much bullshit they suffer from Ren for how long - no shared living community would suffer one of theirs to keep the others up night after night, even the night before major exams - as well as early in the academy entry arc when this feels a bit too much like an American high school teen drama. To your credit, you have rectified the latter rather quickly, but it is still a point that bears mention as a reason for a "almost but not quite
• luda305Royal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  The most important thing I want to mention in this review is that structurally the story begins fairly odd.  It almost feels like there are three prologues. The story is nominally about Shaya going to a magical academy. But, it takes a while to even get there. The first paragraph of the synopsis (above) becomes the prologue proper, which is two written letters (brilliant idea by the way). The second paragraph of the synopsis is chapters 1-3, and consists of the orphaned siblings surviving as she gets her power up. Then after a time skip, there are 10+ chapters involving a journey from her adopted home and a fight against monsters, before getting near the academy. It just feels like I've been reading for so long and the main story hasn't even really started yet. There's just so much set-up, and while that helps with drip-feeding us a lot of worldbuilding exposition, it still feels like a chore.
  Speaking of worldbuildding, I also want to mention that the magic is very complex. You have to gain an esper, are limited to certain flavors of aether, you channel and cultivate aether, and must shape it into circuits and who knows what else that I've either forgotten or haven't learned yet.  I can't really judge it at this time, but I do worry that it may be too complex later on, distracting the reader from the story as they try to parse through the... technobabble? Magicobabble?
  Whatever.
  Circling back to the structural issues, I also feel like the prologue through chapter 3 is full of plot holes and crazy coincidences. In short, I'm not at all clear why the hell the protagonist and her brother are even left alive by the empire.  Maybe there's some underlying reason, but we won't learn that for a long, long while, if ever, and that's just going to be a niggling point at the back of my head.
  Also, if you're picking this story up because you want to read about mages, I should also point out that she (and others) aren't mages in the usual sense, i.e., backline spellcasters in r
• NaryanRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  I am not good at writing reviews. I can't really say much about why I enjoy reading this story but I feel like the average review score is a bit low for a story I enjoy reading this much so here we go. This is me doing my part to improve it a little bit.
• ClavitaRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  This story, as far as I can tell, is about a very lucky, talented and somewhat hardworking woman trying to overcome challenges originating mainly from her demonic ancestry and a political climate that has a very good reason to be wary of anything with even a hint of a "corruption".
  It's a pretty good beginning. We get to the main timeline a little bit late (chapter 4)
  I think some readers might turn away from the story thinking this 3+ chapter long prelude is what the rest of the book is like. Those chapters are essential for setting up the future conflicts and backstory but I believe the author would have been better off combining the first 3 chapters.
  but the author does make sure to set up a lot of potential plot points.
  Where this story loses me a bit is with the appearance of an extremely rare and cute pet, that will be a future death machine, that the MC somewhat spontaneously takes in. (It's cute but unrealistic and gives me more of the wish-fulfilment-fantasy vibes than a-serious-attempt-at-writing-a-novel.)
  Beside that there are some lines of dialog that seem to be there exclusively for worldbuilding purposes (the characters themselves don't have any external reason to comment on politics or the nature of that race or another).
  Another thing that irritates me a little bit (but I'm pretty sure it's more of a personal preference thing) is the constant talking back to the MC's trainer and nonsense banter during the tracking of a dangerous monster pack. Shouldn't the tracking be the part where silence is paramount? Doesn't the MC have a military training where respecting your supervisors should be pretty important?
  That said the overall experience while reading the story is pleasant. There is a lot of action and intrigue. This is just the begging of this story but I'm optimistic for the plotlines to come. It's also worth noting that this novel is being written for the Writeathon Challenge so a bit of sloppiness is to be expected (and the update rate is downrigh
• 1212BRoyal Road

  ★★★ 3.0

  I... Feel like I have much to say, but also don't.
  The worldbuilding here is interesting — The world is vast and the depth of its history and lore blows of the other fictions on this site out of the water.
  But that's... sadly not something the story really ever takes advantage of... In fact, I feel it actively hurts my enjoyment of the story at this point.
  Instead we get... A whole lot of magic school.
  To illustrate my feelings, I'll use an example.
  Imagine you have a snow globe — And that is all you're allowed to use for entertainment. Your head is locked so it is the only thing you can look at.
  Occasionally it will be shaken, the snow will scatter, rise and fall and it will be mesmerising — for a moment. In the end it will all settle again and the globe slips back into a comfortable lull until something else happens to upset it again.
  That is the magical academy the story takes place in.
  Now the lore is someone else bringing little goodies into the room and placing them just in the periphery of your field of vision.
  A game console, a phone, some headphones, maybe even a sudoku booklet.
  After a while, no matter how pretty the snow globe, you just want to do something — anything else.
  That's this story to me.
  There are times where things happen outside the academy — And those parts are almost always entertaining — But in the end we always return to it.
  I really enjoyed it at the beginning — I sang it praises for its worldbuilding — but it just started grinding me down until I first put it on hold, and finally, after several months of waiting caught up again.
  And... we're still in the magical academy... I just don't have the energy to keep myself motivated to read until we aren't.
  Maybe I'll check back in in 100 or 200 chapters, but the realist in me knows that when that time comes I will have already forgotten of this story's existence.
  For better or for worse — I'm out.