 Man, I got all the trouble of setting this thing up and people are upset with me because they don't like that There's moving images back there like multiple people have told me that so I'll put some more soothing this time. How about that? Like I actually don't even know what it'll be right now, but I'm that's editor James's problem So the last keeper by JV Hilliard This one was actually sent to me by the author and while I normally don't do requests this one I figured it looks kind of neat, so I'll check it out And I was not paid for it, but I was given a free copy of the book and I will say that while It very much is a new author's first novel in that it has a lot of the problems you would expect from that It was a decent read. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long So this story is in a lot of ways just what you would expect from a fantasy story, so I'm not gonna go into super detail I don't think this will be a very long review like the world it takes place in is more or less What you would expect the type of story that it is is what you would expect, you know There's some evil dudes trying to do things. There's some good dudes trying to do things. There's magic running around There's some prophecies and people see in the future and they're just doing stuff like that so I'm not gonna go into detail about the story because Just from that you already know pretty much what's going to happen here at least for the most part there are a few smaller Moments which did catch me a little bit off guard, but it is more or less what you'd expect the main issue I have with the story is just that it's confusingly told and that's mostly because there's too many characters here like There are like six or seven Characters that I would call POV characters even though this is in third person where we're just following their separate story lines and they don't Intersect all that much when they really should intersect more and Frankly, we didn't need this many like I would say you could cut out or combine a lot of characters And that would make all of their individual story lines stronger And it would also make it less difficult to follow because by the end of this book It's just a mishmash of a bunch of different names. I don't recognize and me trying to remember Okay, who's that again? What are they up to? What are they doing? Where are they? And well, that's just frustrating like the only storyline that I was really into and was really able to follow all the Way through was a Ritter who is the closest thing we have to a protagonist here and in the back half of the book He doesn't actually get that much screen time, which is unfortunate because I actually I liked him You know his story lines straightforward, but he's also just a very straightforward character like he is what's known as what's known as a troll born in this world, which is basically just a mixed-race person and So he's not always treated well, but in spite of that he always just tries to do the right thing You know, even if it's not gonna get him rewarded Even if he's not gonna be treated with the respect he probably deserves and even if his accomplishments will never even really be recognized he wants to do the right thing just because it's the right thing to do and I Don't know. It's just it was very endearing. I liked watching him And he's also a bit older than you would expect from a protagonist like this Like I don't know if it specifies, but he's I think early 20s and the thing is considering how much fantasy I read is a little bit more dark and mature and Morally gray, I guess you would say once in a while It is nice to have a hero who's just heroic and not for any other reasons than he wants to do the right thing You know, he's not really selfish. There's not really any unsavory aspects to him He's just a nice guy. The main thing about him that annoyed me was his name Ritter. Like he's a knight named Ritter Come on, man. Like in fact, there's also a city which is mentioned a couple times in the book And it sounds like it's supposed to be some vaguely Middle Eastern desert city and it's called Saracen which Saracen is literally just an old name for Arab people like if you're gonna Do names like that at least change him up a little bit and I think there may have been one or two others in the book that I either forgot about or just Didn't notice because I admittedly a lot of people would not know what the word Saracen means or what the word Ritter means But some people will and it just it just irked me when I saw it all the other characters are Not really bad for the most part, but few of them stood out to me Especially the side characters with the exception of one guy named Arjun. Now Arjun is just an old grizzled warrior but He's really good at being an old grizzled warrior, you know, like it doesn't feel like the story is Going out of its way to make him look cool. It just seems like yeah This is just what he does and what he's really good at so it's very matter-of-fact about and I liked that I mean one of my favorite parts of this book is just when he's telling the story about how He was in a fort with a garrison of 60 men and they held off an entire army for a couple of days and That's a very short sequence and he's a minor side character But in spite of that I still remember him really well And I think that's a sign of a really well done character. The rest of them are all you know, they're they're Competently done. I don't remember any of them really being annoying or stupid or anything like that, but Well, they just They're there, you know, that that's a problem that a lot of first-time authors have I've noticed is they just put in too many characters and as a result none of them really get time to shine and Even the ones that do get time to shine kind of just act everything out on the surface level like there's not a Lot of depth to them and when there is depth it is just shown to us rather than us having to intuit it and read between the lines which is Just a little unsatisfying, but I mean again first-time author you can't get angry with them or anything The world is as I mentioned what you would kind of expect from a fantasy in the modern day and that is a vaguely medieval Europe type world with magic thrown in there and Usually they'll have one maybe two aspects of the world which make it different than others. You've read before And this is pretty common like for example in Wheel of Time For the most part it is just what you would expect from a fantasy medieval world Except that a lot of the societies and cultures you meet along the way are Matriarchal in nature and that's just not something you see a lot So that sets it apart and obviously if you go into the fine details of all types of fantasy books You can find the smaller differences, but I'm talking broad strokes here and in this case in The Last Keeper There's several different races like there's humans and bone elves and dark elves and that sort of thing and Normally when there's a bunch of different races like that in fantasy People who are mixed race are very rare But in this world they're actually pretty common like they're called Trollborn like I mentioned earlier and They're common enough that there are entire tribes of Trollborn and they have their own little Subcultures and their own positions in society and stuff But just the fact that something like this actually gets focus is really nice because I mean again mixed race people have always been around in the Real world and it is a little odd to me how in most settings They're just very uncommon so in this one It's like hey, let's put a whole bunch of them there and see what that does And I I really liked most everything to do with learning about the Trollborn And I hope that sequels go into even more detail about that because as it stands now it is still just A pretty minor part of the story But I I really liked it and that's about everything I have to add here Like I guess I could go into more detail about certain aspects But I think you get the picture by this point like I had some fun reading it It's not a super long book like it's only a little over 400 pages And I think that's part of the reason why the Too many characters problem stands out so much if this was a longer book It might not have been such a big deal, but yeah at the end of the day I think this is a fun fantasy read You know it is made by someone who is pretty new to this But I'm sure if he works at it a bit because he clearly has some passion for it I'm sure he will get better and hopefully the sequels to this and any other books He writes in the future will be pretty good Thanks again to mr. Hilliard for sending me a free copy of this And I hope everyone has a lovely day the thing whatever I the outro. Goodbye Hello, and thank you for watching this far if you did you have my thanks And if you see all these names here, those are my patrons my $10 and up patrons are All of you are great if you want to get your name up here then consider becoming a patron If you can't do that then you could also become a youtube channel member Or just like the video comment and subscribe to share it around and help me Eat food this month, uh Yeah, thanks. Goodbye