Ceremonia - Shop now
Kindle Unlimited
Unlimited reading. Over 4 million titles. Learn more
Read for Free
OR
$2.99 with 63 percent savings
Print List Price: $7.99

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Sold by Amazon.com Services LLC.

Audiobook Price: $13.08

Save: $5.59 (43%)

Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Marva Dasef
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

First Duty Kindle Edition

by Marva Dasef (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.6 out of 5 stars 21 ratings
Nyra Hutchings, a young woman born into a life of servitude on a repressive factory planet, is desperate for a different life. When she's accepted into the Space Service Academy, run by the organization that enslaves her planet, she discovers the truth behind generations of rebellion. Now, she must decide what to believe, where her first duty lies, and fight for more than her life against impossible odds. Space Opera/SF Romance.
Read more
Previous slide of product details
  1. Reading age
    12 - 18 years
  2. Print length
    154 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Grade level
    6 - 12
  5. Publication date
    June 21, 2010
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
Next slide of product details
Unwell Hydration from Alex Cooper
Hydrate & focus with every sip Shop now

Editorial Reviews

Review

Cleverly plotted, engaging characters, all promise a good read. Don't miss it. --Lorrie Struiff, Author of Gypsy Crystal

Dasef has created a universe here, a future for an ever-changing human race that's just begging to be filled with more stories.
--Edward Cox, SDP Reviewer

Those young people who enjoy science fiction, especially the sort with implications for today's society, should enjoy this story, and perhaps be eager for further developments. --Al Past, Author of the Distant Cousin series

From the Author

Nyra's story began more than 25 years ago. I wrote a short story titled 'Pressure Drill' about a young woman's final exam as a cadet in the Space Corps. The exam is not only final, but often fatal for the cadet. I put the story aside, along with a lot of other things I'd written, but never bothered to submit for publication. We didn't have email submissions back then, and it was far too much trouble to print out and snail mail to the very limited number of venues for a story like this.

Many years pass while I worked in the computer industry, all thoughts of fiction tucked away for later. "Later" finally arrived. I dragged out my old stories and thought "Pressure Drill" was pretty good and deserved to find a home. It did in a couple of different on-line SF/F ezines. I wrote another story about Nyra which delved into her purpose for joining a military organization. That story, "First Duty," also found a publishing home.

I completed Nyra's story and the book was contracted by a very small publisher. The was pre-ebook days. When my contract expired, I published the novella, "First Duty," on my own.

Also look at "Ultimate Duty," an expansion on the story with more mature material. It was published by Eternal Press in 2010.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003TJAW5W
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Texas Boy Publications (June 21, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 21, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1.1 MB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 154 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.6 out of 5 stars 21 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Marva Dasef

Marva Dasef

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Marva Dasef is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. Retired from thirty-five years in the software industry, she has now turned her energies to writing fiction and finds it a much more satisfying occupation.

Marva has published more than forty stories in a number of on-line and print magazines, with several included in Best of anthologies. She has several already published print and ebooks, and is now turning them into audio books. Twelve audio books are currently available.

See a complete list of her published work at http://tinyurl.com/DasefAuthor/ and http://mgddasef.blogspot.com/

Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars
21 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

  • Eduardo Suastegui
    4.0 out of 5 stars Overall, First Duty is a compelling adventure story with ...
    Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Overall, First Duty is a compelling adventure story with personal growth and struggle at its core. It overcomes its marginal faults (and it has some, such as at times stilted dialog and characterization that feels light in spots) through a protagonist I wanted to follow and cheer on. Primarily, the story’s appeal to me came from the struggle of a young woman raised to know and pledge allegiance to a system whose integrity and principles she comes to question. When presented with the choice to join the opposition, which way will she go and what choices and sacrifices will she be willing to make? That central tension kept me reading and enjoying Ultimate Duty.
    (3.5 out of 5 stars, rounded up to 4)
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Liz
    5.0 out of 5 stars First Duty
    Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    This is a great read! First Duty is set in the distant future - a believable world you can immerse yourself into, with a fast pace and engaging main character I can relate to. She's tough and intelligent, a great change from all the sappy female leads these days. I loved this book and highly recommend it!
    3 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Antony Chow
    3.0 out of 5 stars A Bit Undercooked
    Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2011
    Verified Purchase
    First Duty is not what I expected when I made the decision to purchase this novel. I thought it would be a kind of space opera with plenty of spacecraft to spacecraft action. Instead, it's about a rebellion set in a future world of corporate commercialization of worlds.

    The backdrop is certainly original. Imagine whole worlds existing solely to cater to the needs of a corporation. Brand Gamblin's Tumbler does something similar. However, the author does not devote enough time and energy developing this setting. How do people live in these worlds? What form of governance exist? Do they live in cities sprawled above ground, or interconnected caves below ground? Sadly, the author does not talk about this at all.

    Instead, First Duty focuses on a budding rebellion on various planets against the corporate owner. And the protagonist has a somewhat meager role in it. The novel leads up to an ethical dilemma for Nyra Hutchings, the main protagonist: her oath to Space Service, and her duty to her historical roots. Again, the author spends too little time wrestling with this question. And therefore, I finished this novel with a profound sense of disappointment.
    Helpful
     Report
  • sci-fi reader
    1.0 out of 5 stars Nothing story
    Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    First, sci-fi had nothing to do with the story, it could have been set centuries in the past with sailing ships and not been any different. The outcome was predictable after the first couple of chapters so it gets my "big yawn" rating. Finally, the characters were so flat they could have been cardboard and as a reader I didn't care what happened to them. Move along folks, nothing here at all.
    Helpful
     Report
  • Amazon Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars More fun to read
    Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    This is a good read to pass the time with. Better editing than a few of this style that I have read lately and it does leave me wanting to read the next book in the series.
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • JAL
    2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
    Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2011
    Verified Purchase
    As a huge fan of SF, I expected to like this, and I did manage to finish it. But there was only a thin and predictable plot and almost no character development, nor was the writing very good. It is probably the beginning of a series, but I will not be interested in reading any more of these books.
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Eric Bowling
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good for grown ups and suitable for YA as well
    Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2012
    An interesting story exploring the essence of humanity as a whole, corporate dominance over government, the source of insurgency and rebellion, certainly. And an exploration of the person caught in the middle of it all. Flat and dry in places and a lower education level for the word choice and sentence structure certainly, to accommodate suitability for younger readers. However, the author does manage to work within the constraints of YA to tell a compelling story.
    I enjoyed it.
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Rick Boatright
    3.0 out of 5 stars eye candy... but little protein
    Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2011
    The main characters have it too easy, transitions are to simple and the timeline is over compressed, but still a fast fun read. 3 stars max tho.
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • ABookUnopened
    3.0 out of 5 stars The Establishment or the Rebellion?
    Reviewed in India on August 13, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    I know Marva Dasef as the author of the gentle, imaginative and exploratory books of the Abu Nuwas series, and so I was looking forward to First Duty, bearing in mind, of course, that this time we are talking science fiction and not fantasy. I’ve also read her other fine books, Lemons and Other Kid Tales and Fish Story, so I grabbed the chance to pick up First Duty on a hefty discount when Marva Dasef did a giveaway. I was pretty confident I’d get something suited for kids of ages 12 -90. No gruesome horrors, wicked but not evil villains, simple but not simplified plots.
    First Duty does not quite pull off the same standards. Don’t get me wrong: the writing is crisp and the editing flawless, which already lifts the book head and shoulders over most indie books. But it’s in the reasoning that it stumbles. When Abu Nuwas asks a young boy whether it is right for girls to be disallowed from certain activities, he lets the boy reason it out for himself. Nyra, the protagonist of First Duty doesn’t quite reason anything out. She goes from action to action much like a TV serial heroine. There twists and turns in the plot, but none of the mind. Freedom is presented to us as an unalloyed good, losing the chance to explain to young readers what exactly is wrong when corporatisation of whole planets results in poorly-fed slave labour. The desperation of the tall and martial-arts-talented Nyra to get off-planet is there, but there is no back-story to explain why. We know there is inequality in the whole setup, but we barely brush the fringes or implications of it.
    Nyra survives the initial test (ha, you guessed that, did you?) and the first chapters did bring out a bit of the heartlessness of the system in that cadets could be and did get killed in the last test, for no real reason other than ‘testing’. She then is part of a mission to deliver a rebel to prison, where she gets to know for the first time that there is a rebellion, and what the reasons for it are (freedom, equality).
    At this point, I felt that Nyra is a naif. But is she? She’s supposed to be one of the smartest cadets, and she is selected, after all, to infiltrate the rebels, once she’s presented that plan as a fait accompli. So, plenty of initiative, smarts, physical capability, and perhaps charm, to be able to convince the rebel leader she is a committed rebel.
    She meets a lot of rebels, and finds out more about the status of the rebellion on her own home world, something she had been blithely ignorant of. Are real teens that ignorant? It’s possible, but surely a sharp young woman like Nyra would have known something more than she does. Or is she like the many one-track minds one sees alas too often in academia, someone who scores well by single-minded focus, and therefore not a rounded personality with other interests?
    She goes from adventure to adventure, with a final result you can expect from reading the back cover or my own headline for this post (spoilers? Who, me? Never!) And yet, somehow, it seems not to quite touch her at any depth. Not the unexplained sexism of her first Captain, nor the suspicion of the second. It’s all: huh, I shall prove to you that I am capable. Nyra is too perfect already, there is no scope of showing growth in the character.
    Another lost opportunity is the Vargans, including one of Nyra’s few friends, Smith, who is her contact back to headquarters, someone who follows her into the rebel stronghold under the guise of a romance. Dasef has created a super-race of humans adapted to extreme environments, one of whom is the laid-back Smith. However, the special organs and abilities don’t actually have anything to do in the story. I hope the sequels will put these to better use.
    All in all, a light read, with a light touch, and a light treatment. Anyway, I’m off to read the first of Marva Dasef’s Witches of Galdorheim.
    Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report