The Part About the Dragon Was (Mostly) True

By: Sean Gibson

Narrated by: Haley Catherine

Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Sure, you think you know the story of the fearsome red dragon, Dragonia. How it terrorized the village of Skendrick until a brave band of heroes answered the noble villagers' call for aid. How nothing could stop those courageous souls from facing down the dragon. How they emerged victorious and laden with treasure. But, even in a world filled with epic adventures and tales of derring-do, where dragons, goblins, and unlicensed prestidigitators run amok, legendary heroes don't always know what they're doing. Sometimes they're clueless. Sometimes beleaguered townsfolk are more hapless than helpless. And orcs? They're not always assholes, and sometimes they don't actually want to eat your children.

Heloise the Bard, Erithea's most renowned storyteller (at least, to hear her tell it), is here to set the record straight. See, it turns out adventuring isn't easy, and true heroism is as rare as an articulate villager. Having spent decades propagating this particular myth (which, incidentally, she wrote), she finally able to tell the real story - for which she just so happened to have a front-row seat. Welcome to Erithea. I hope you brought a change of undergarments - things are going to get messy.

©2020 Machovi Productions Inc (P)2021 Machovi Productions Inc

Fun!

This is a light-hearted, fun, delight of a book. To me, the humor got better and better as the book went along, until the culmination where...well, I won't spoil anything, but it's hilarious! The story is fun and fast-paced, and the conclusion is perfect. I would recommend this to anyone who likes fun and smiling and laughing :)

Amazing story, audio editing leaves much to be desired

The story was a ton of fun. It absolutely doesn't take itself seriously. This could have easily been written about one of my former D&D groups where one person tries to be a Very Serious Gamer (™) while the rest of the group was mostly having fun roleplaying, exploring the world, and generally not doing the most obvious "attack everything" method of combat.

Humor was occasionally too over the top slapstick, but I did laugh out loud numerous times when it hit just right. Despite being a band of utterly unexperienced adventurers, each character was well designed to play to their own strengths despite their weaknesses. It made me like all the characters, even the gruff one, the narcissistic one, the naive one, the smelly one, the... you get the idea. They were unapologetically true to themselves, take them or leave them. I'll take them all!

The problem is with the audio version of the book. The editing was BAD. This is one of the BEST narrators I've ever heard. Seriously, I'm going to look up and listen to books Haley narrates regardless of the genre or plot. But I didn't want to hear the whole second chapter twice. I didn't want to hear the same word or phrase repeated with different inflections as she played through some of the dialogue. Some sections were clearly re-recorded in a completely different and very echoey room. And the volume was not relatively steady throughout, but would have periods every so often where it would get LOUD and then quiet alternating, sometimes in the same sentence. Very off-putting. Whoever edited this needs to go back to school and retake an editing class. Worst I've ever heard in over 500 audiobooks I've listened to. Don't let that put you off listening, though. Haley Catherine is a real treat when things are put together correctly.

Laughed Out Loud

The book is engaging and parts were hilarious. The audio had a few places where it repeated. The narrator was excellent.

Palate cleanser.

Funny, charming, heartwarming, exciting and so very clever.
I listen to so much dark fantasy that this was an exceptionally well crafted palate cleanser. I mean this in the best possible way.

Fun and engaging!

Super fun fantasy adventure! Characters are WAY more interesting (thanks to narrator Haley Catherine) than any portrayal my brain would have created reading the book. Especially when it came to the song in chapter 12! Tears 😭 so good!!!

Not enough story for the length of the book

There was a chuckle here and there, but all of the characters were pretty one-dimensional, including the main character. So there was a lot of repetition of the same basic joke, and repetition didn’t make it any funnier. The narrator started out by speaking too rapidly when delivering the snide comments, but she got better. Honestly, I don’t think she could’ve salvaged this story.

Its meh

The story would have been ok if they stuck to it but they keep bringing up political topics that just don't work its Distractioning. But the narrator is good.