A Reign of Emerald Fire

The author gifted me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Let's start with the setting. This story centres a classic fantasy setting, with different races such as humans, elves, dwarves and other creatures like, a dragon. The magic isn't really explored in this first book, which left me quite disappointed, I like when magic systems are explored, I want to understand them. However, in this world we do have religious groups that are very prominent in the story, something that I truly enjoy.
The story also has a very classic fantasy feeling to it. It's a quest centred story where a very unlikely group of characters have to team up and go on a quest to fight off a dragon. One is going in the hopes of restoring his honour, another was present in the dragon attack in the north, and she's the only clue that they have of the dragon's whereabouts. Lastly, a young boy goes because he wanted to leave his small town. The premise seems interesting, but my main issue was how slow the pacing was. We spent the entirety of the book following them throughout their journey, but not only did they not get to the dragon; the story barely had any action that made the plot move forward. I know this is the first book in a trilogy, but I found myself bored throughout the book.
We follow three POVs. A disgraced soldier, a half elf and half dwarf young man that lives in a small town and a young women, daughter of an important noble that ran away from home. In my opinion, it was quite difficult to distinguish these three characters in their mannerisms for they were all quite similar. Their sense of humour was witty, sarcastic and rude, which made it difficult to distinguish them. Plus, the secondary characters also suffered from this, it felt like everyone was the same. Not only that, but the characters weren't memorable or different from any others that I've encountered.
The antagonist is rather plain; his motives are to gain power through religion and the appearance of the dragon. Although the reason behind his actions is quite common in fantasy books, the antagonist could've had more presence and his plans could've been more detailed. In my opinion, it was too obvious why he was doing what he was doing and there wasn't much scheming or planning that made his actions interesting or intriguing to me.
Overall, I think this book would've benefited if it was longer, more detailed and the story had more plans or reveals that made the companies travelling more interesting.