 Okay, so today we have another Patreon request. This is actually the last Patreon request that I'm doing at the $20 tier from now on. If you have a book that you want, that you wrote that you want me to review, it's $40 and up. I'm sorry a lot of people are doing it, but today we have the last one that I'm doing at that tier. It is A Greater Duty by Yakov Merkin, and this one was weird because I enjoyed it overall. It's solid, if not earth-shattering, but it's very forgettable. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. I mean I finished reading this about two days before this recording, and I've already forgotten most of the fine details about it, and I think as the days go on, after like a month, I'm going to forget almost everything about this book except for one or two things about the characters. Not even the storyline so much, but let's get into the plot. So this story is about a furry alien, let's be honest, like just look at the cover of the book. Like Nyasar is a furry, let's be honest, and she is the grand admiral of this planet that was attacked by the Galactic Alliance, or rather it was attacked by members of the Galactic Alliance and they just didn't really do anything to stop it, and a whole bunch of innocent people on her planet died, like thousands of them. And she's really pissed so she wants to go after the people who did it, but she can't because the king is afraid that it'll start a war so she's really pissed, and meanwhile this guy known as Darkclaw comes from out of unknown space and attacks the Alliance as well and starts deciding, hey I'm going to conquer all this shit in the name of the High Lord who is his boss. And from there it's pretty typical space opera I think, you know there's big battles, there's some mysteries, there's an ancient civilization that might hold the key to saving the universe, that sort of thing, and while again overall I think it's good I don't think there's all that much about it that really stands out. So the few negatives up front, this book often takes way too long to describe things that are happening, like not too often, but every once in a while I was like yeah this was described in a page, you probably could have done it in half a page. For example, the prologue of this book goes on about three times longer than it needs to. Like all you need to really say is there's this mysterious force coming from outer, not from outer space, it's all outer space, but coming from out of unknown space and just conquering stuff and the guy who is in charge of them is named Darkclaw and he wants to take over. You know he doesn't just want to kill everything for no reason he's just yes I'm a conqueror. I will also say that there are parts here that are just a little too cliched for me to get into. Now there's some bits of this which I'll get into in a minute which are unique I should say or maybe not unique but like they take old-school sci-fi tropes and cliches but they portray them in more of a modern angle. Like for example the way how Darkclaw the conqueror is not just a I want to conquer things for no reason guy and he is an actual, well he's not a human, but he feels like an actual person with a personality and stuff and I really liked that. That was cool. And the last thing that I really have to complain about is how the summary of this book gives away way too much. Like again you should have cut out a bunch of the information and made it about half as long because it's way too long and it gives away a lot of stuff that honestly had I been reading the book I wouldn't have expected some things like how again Darkclaw is a little bit more complex than he first appears and he starts to change over the course of the story which I think is cool but I was also kind of expecting it because of the summary. All that out of the way the main things I liked about this book were the two big characters like I said Niasar and Darkclaw because not really a big spoiler. Niasar starts working with Darkclaw to get her revenge on the Alliance because the Alliance while they would probably be the good guys in most space operas are kind of a nasty organization really. They're they're run by some unsavory people and they're not totally evil but yeah there's a there's a lot of room for improvement let's say and so she's working with Darkclaw to destroy them but she also feels oh we're going a little too far with this and overall she's just a very emotional character and she has every right to be she has every right to be extremely angry because she was wronged and her people were wronged and were I in that situation I don't know how I would act probably not a whole lot different than she does so yeah I totally get that and that contrasts very sharply with Darkclaw who is really stoic and emotionless for the most part like not to the point where he's a robot but really to the point where at first you feel like okay he's just unceasingly loyal to his duty and unceasingly loyal to the High Lord but as the story goes on he also starts to realize you know maybe I'm not doing the right thing and I'm not gonna give away that where that goes but I liked it and every step along the way felt like a natural progression. I also thought it was really cool how Darkclaw was working for the High Lord and it's made clear that they have a massive Empire out there somewhere beyond the fringes of known space and this is really only a fraction of their full military might like if they were able to put everything towards conquering the Alliance it would be over in a flash and I liked that because they still feel really powerful like they still feel like intimidating villains as it were but you also know there's so much more they could give you like the only place I can think of where I've seen this was in Mass Effect Andromeda which I don't know that game got a lot of hate I liked it but basically the villains in that were a similar situation there they were just one little group of an alien military that was coming to take over that one sector of the galaxy that you're in but outside of that sector they had a whole Empire a whole massive massive Empire that if they feel like it they can come down and hit you with so it was a similar situation to that and in both cases I thought it was pretty cool because it also ties into that whole idea of space being huge and mysterious and there's a whole lot of stuff out there that you don't know about and if you do find it you can't even really properly comprehend it because it's just so beyond you and that's something that I don't get very often from science fiction like I occasionally get it from fantasy but even then not that often it's just I liked seeing that and that's about it I know this is a short review like especially by my standards but I really don't have that much more to say like I said it is a solid book I think A Greater Duty is a solid book it's the beginning of a trilogy but it's pretty self-contained which short aside all good trilogies the first entry is self-contained like look at the original Star Wars trilogy the first movie is pretty self-contained and then after that it goes into more of a continuous story that way if you for whatever reason are unable to pick up the second and third ones then you can just read this one and it works well as its own story so that is a good thing but all that said like I said it's a it's a solid book I enjoyed it I liked it yeah it's really cheesy don't get me wrong I but I liked some of the cheese I didn't like some of the cheese and there were some parts in there that genuinely took me off guard and I wasn't expecting it to go in that direction and it was a bit more mature than I initially expected it to be so overall if you're a fan of old-school space operas or if you're a fan of a little more modernist soap opera space operas not soap operas I always get those two mixed up my god but if you're a fan of either of those this book does actually combine them fairly well so if you're looking for something like that then I'd recommend checking it out special thanks to all of my patrons whose names you see here and a huge huge thanks to the $10 up guys who include Apo Savilainen, Olivia Rayan, Ava Tumor, brother Santotis, Christopher Quinton, Deanna Dahim, Mbis Joel, Karkak Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Madison Lewis Bennett, microphone, Sad Martigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, and Vaivictus all of you guys are seriously you are the best without you I would not be able to do stuff like this and if you want to get your name up here or if you want to get access to other stuff like seeing my videos early or voting on polls to determine what I'll cover next then consider becoming one of my patrons you know all dollar a month that's all it takes and if you don't feel like doing that or if you can't then just rating this video commenting on it and subscribing to my channel those all those all really help me and I will see you guys later bye