 Hello, I stand here today, or not standing, I'm sitting here today in crappy lighting to tell you guys all about this next page requested review, which was Voyage of the Shadow Moon and it was requested by Moritz Fuchs, actually now that I'm thinking about it I think it's supposed to be Moritz Fuchs, but you know, either way I read this book and it was fine. This is the introduction song, it's not very good but it's not too long. If you missed the last one of these I did, basically I'm not doing Patreon requested reviews anymore, at least until I can think of a new way to do them, so I only had three more to do and this is number two, so after this there'll only be one more. If you want more detail watch the Eye of the Oracle review. But basically Voyage of the Shadow Moon is, well, it sounds kind of like a regular epic fantasy story on paper and in a lot of ways it is. It's basically just, okay, a band of adventurers go off on a quest to stop some sort of major evil dude, like in this case it's basically just this emperor who wants to conquer basically everything and who has this crazy powerful magical weapon that'll allow him to do it. And the main thing that sets it apart, at least a little bit, is that this one is more ocean focused, like I'm not sure what the name for this subgenre would be, like pirate fantasy or something like that, but rather than being mostly people on land doing land based adventures, it's people on a ship who are, you know, they're very experienced sailors and it's mostly about them sailing from place to place and it's nautical themed, nautical focused, however you want to put that and so it does give the setting at the very least a little bit of a different feeling to it, which as someone who hasn't read a whole lot of, again I don't know what you'd call it, but pirate fantasy is what I'm going to call it for now, but as someone who hasn't read a whole lot of that, yeah, it was kind of nice to get something that was at least a little bit different. And beyond that I think that this book is fine, you know, it doesn't have a whole lot in there that really stuck out to me all that much, like I read it and enjoyed it, it's fine, it was all right, but I just, I don't have all that much to talk about really. So an issue that I have is that the beginning kind of falls into the trap of starting off with a bang in that you start off with an action scene. Now it could be a lot worse because I have seen much worse examples of that where it's just like, oh this person swung sword, this other guy swung sword, then gun go off and someone's shot and the problem with that, at least in book form, is that I don't know these people and I don't know what they're fighting about so I don't really care that much. And I've seen worse examples than in this because in this it basically starts off with there's a city that's under siege, it's been under siege for a little while and then there's like a big battle to finish it off, but it doesn't focus on the fighting itself too much, so much as like the people who are in command of one side of the fighting and why exactly they're doing this and what led up to this moment and then the final destruction of the city, or not destruction per se, but the final victory that they achieve, let's say. So while yes, I still didn't care all that much about what was going on at this point and so while this is a big dramatic moment that had it come later in the story would probably have had my attention a little more, it's still not too awful here, you know I've seen so much worse than that and at the very least it does start things off pretty quickly so other people might be more into that, I don't know. And as for the main ship that most of the characters travel on, the Shadow Moon, I think that's also pretty fun you know it's like at first it seems like oh okay it's just some regular old nondescript ship that no one really cares about, it's really small so it can't carry that much cargo or that many passengers, it doesn't move that fast so like no one cares about it, but then as the story goes on you learn oh okay it's actually much more advanced than that and even though the crew is small they are all at least a little unique in terms of characterization like the captain is kind of his own thing and then pretty early on they bring in a passenger by the name of Loran, I think that's how you're supposed to say it and he, I've seen this trope done before but I still really like it, he is a vampire who's been around for hundreds of years but he still looks like he's a 14 year old boy because he was turned when he was very young and you know I've seen that before like in interview with a vampire Kirsten Dunn's character was you know she looks like a little girl but she was actually much older than that or in a skyrim there was that I want to say her name was Babette, I don't remember though and she was a vampire who was turned when she was 10 years old but she was over 200 by the time the the game starts and I don't know why but something about that is just really cool to me like this body that looks like it should belong to someone well you know who's a child they're they're innocent but they're they're clearly not you know they're vampires they fucking kill people I don't know I just I really like that and I think that's cool and you know we have a couple other characters like that on there and they're they're all fun you know that they all have a little bit of personality to them I remember at least something about all of them that was that was kind of cool it I I have kind of the same issue with this that I had with Zenith it's not to the same extent but if you remember my review of that a few months ago in that one I was a little upset that there were only four members of the crew because part of the fun of having a ship like this is in stuff like say Mass Effect or Firefly where there's a much bigger cast and they all again have their own personalities they have their own goals and dreams they have their own in some cases they have their own unique ways of fighting or uh you can also look at the relationships between all of them which is pretty cool when it's done right like having a bigger crew allows for more of that and in this we only have a couple of characters so that was that was a little disappointing but you know not too big a deal I also thought that the villain the emperor uh was sovereign war sovereign something like that uh I thought he was kind of fun you know he's kind of just an evil dude who's doing evil stuff because he's evil but he had a neat backstory I enjoyed watching him have to not only just be this evil guy who sends his armies at the main characters but he also has to deal with some political intrigue on his side and having to keep his allies in check and avoid being stabbed in the back by his wife you know that that was all kind of fun I enjoyed that and it's rare for political intrigue and political maneuvering stuff to be done well especially in fantasy for some reason like I don't know what it is but they're just most fantasy authors are not particularly good at that which is usually fine when it's not focused on too much but sometimes they focus on it way too much like well like the back half of Wheel of Time is a good example they spend a shitload of time on that and it just feels like yeah I don't want to get into that but basically all the political maneuvering stuff in here that was fun I enjoyed it and you know I just don't have that much specific to say about this you know like like the world is kind of fun you know it's fine it has a little bit of a different feel to it than most other worlds I read about because again it's nautical flavored but it doesn't stand out all that much it's still kind of like oh yeah fantasy world the characters I remember some of them pretty well I there's a bunch that kind of fade into the background because this has a relatively large cast which is unfortunate but you know it does happen and I remember a couple though and those were good you know the way this book is paced and the storyline all that is good the actual prose the writing of it is good and it's it's kind of a simple read for is the thing like there's only so much detail I can go into regarding why I liked it and well yeah I just I just don't have that much else to say this is a fairly long book so if you're just expecting a quick like oh this would be a little swashbuckling adventure like no it's not that you're not going to get that like this is trying to be epic fantasy in a lot of ways so it is fairly long but I did get through it relatively quick so I I don't know just keep all that in mind if you decide to check this one out I I'd recommend at least reading like some sample chapters on Amazon or something if it sounds like something might that might peak that might peak your interest and if not then you're reading it's probably not going to change your mind but overall yeah voyage of the shadow moon I thought it was all right I enjoyed myself special thanks to all the names you see here these are all my patrons and especially thanks to my ten dollar and up patrons oppo savalainen olivia ran brother santotes carolina clay christopher quintan echo great grebo joel karkat kitsune k r stevensson leisel rudakova lord tiebreaker madison lewis benet microphone moritz fox sad martigan samuel nevin tobacco crow tom beanie and vei victus as well as you know everyone who's watched this far if you want to get your name on here or get access to stuff like early access to my videos and voting on what topic i'll cover next then consider becoming a patron 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