⚠️ MAY CONTAIN LIGHT SPOILERS
This review was written only for the first book (From A Wandmaker's Perspective), I'll edit in a follow-up for the second book (Passing of the Witch) soon.

Dragon and Ceremony takes you on a quest through a world shrouded in secrets and the arcane – a high fantasy setting with historical and cultural backgrounds as its focus, certainly a theme seldom found in the genre.

It presents a mystery set in an unfamiliar world, an investigation of long forgotten history. However, despite being a fantasy, it remains very human in nature – a world torn by territorial, religious, and racial conflict and power struggles, and one where customs and tradition evolve, sometimes even losing their meaning over time. The logic and arguments that can be used in our world, can also be applied here. Perhaps the only things that truly separates their world from ours are the presence of mythical creatures and utilization of magic.

The story focuses on two main protagonists, Ix, a fledgling wandmaker - an architect of the tools needed to channel magic, yet one that is unable to use magic, and his client, Yuui - a young girl hailing from a distant land staying at an unfamiliar kingdom for reasons undisclosed, owner of a powerful wand, and someone who is unsure of her place in the world.

In order to fulfill his client's request, Ix needed to find clues regarding the mythical dragon. Yuui accompanies him in the search, and the pair try to find anything related that may become a lead; from old books, records about indigenous customs, and hearsay, but trying to find factual information about something that has already been deemed nothing but legend proved to be challenging. By going on a journey to pursue the few leads that they did find, the both of them who were unsure of their purpose in the world, now worked together temporarily towards a common goal.

Worldbuilding is the strongest aspect of this novel. Each region mentioned has their own cultural backgrounds and origins, traditions, and unique atmosphere. The setting feels like a world that has existed long before the story had begun, and one that will continue to exist long after the story has reached its conclusion. Though at the beginning things may seem vague and incoherent, the bigger picture is steadily revealed, and the groundwork was steadily laid as you progress through the story. It starts going at a more interesting pace, and keeps that momentum until the very end. As the main mystery calmly unravels, it focuses in on the reasons as well as the different thoughts of the characters.

The illustrations and artwork are very nice and pleasant to look at. Simplistic but compliments the story well, and character designs definitely fit the image they present. In fact, the cover was the main reason I was drawn to read this novel in the first place.

In terms of characters, the protagonists are interesting in their own right, they have good chemistry, fitting personalities, and the dialogue exchanges between them were a fun read. In the early parts of the novel, their origins are mostly left to the reader’s imagination, the ones pursuing a mystery being a mystery themselves too makes for quite a fascinating narrative. For the side characters however, they were a bit lacking in depth, especially compared to the protagonists, but they still served their purpose in the story well enough, just not as memorable.

“Does that mean I can have hope we will understand each other someday?”

“Maybe in a hundred, or a thousand years from now, but someday we will.”

At its core, Dragon and Ceremony presents a journey - a journey about change and finding a purpose in the world, a journey that shows coming to terms with a painful past, and not letting it decide the future, and a journey about acceptance and self-reflection blended in with the pursuit of the unknown. It offers a unique spin on the adventure-fantasy genre by incorporating mystery elements in tandem with fictional history and culture, presenting a rich world and flawed but interesting main characters. The story draws you in by showing only disconnected pieces of a puzzle, connecting them slowly with each page, and then finishing off with a solemn, yet satisfying conclusion.

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I honestly don't know how I feel about this.

The reason why I decided to read this novel is solely because I loved the character design of the girl in the cover.
And as a collector I had to own all 3 volumes, and it certainly helps that this series is only 3 volumes because I don't think I would be able to keep reading much further.

In the surface, Dragon and the Ceremony seems like an interesting and unique fantasy story with a good mystery behind it. And I do agree that the first volume sets up a really good mystery story, one that I honestly haven't seen done in any other LNs before.
But I don't really think this novel needed a continuation. In my opinion the first volume is the best one and the other two are decent but not that great.

I think my main problem that I have, is that it was just a chore to get through this series, each novel felt like it was way bigger than it needed to be, but maybe it's just my attention span, because I know each chapter has a piece of the puzzle that will be later revealed in the end.

In terms of story the first volume is really good, it sets up this fantasy mystery about ancient Dragons and the main characters have to research if the myths are true.
It's honestly really good, but it seems the other two volumes just follow the exact same formula as the first one.
The main characters discover a legend or myth, they go to a town to investigate, and there they hear about rumors or ancient tales, and by the end they discover what's really going on.

That's pretty much all that this story has, yes the characters have interesting backgrounds and the novel goes deep into their characters but that's mostly what I enjoyed from this series.

I recommend this series for anyone who likes fantasy and mystery, but to anyone looking for a tale of heroes and action, this is not really it.
Overall it's a good story, it could just have been shorter.

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