Ghost of the Truthseeker

Blurb

Earth is initiated, and Alistair finds himself in a dangerous new world…

On a day like any other, an alien descends to Earth, unleashing untold death and destruction.

Alistair watches the live news footage of the carnage, his eyes glued to the image of impossible power made manifest.

The alien’s arrival kicks events into motion that no one could have predicted. Earth is prematurely initiated into a universe-spanning empire of cut-throat cultivators, beasts, and entities of ungodly power – all guided by a mysterious AI System.

The System’s first quest? Kill someone.

Amidst the chaos, Alistair must make a choice. Will he fight for the sake of power, or stand against the forces of evil?

His decision will alter the threads of destiny.

Separated from his family and friends, Alistair must find his way through a new world where power is obtained through conflict – and cultivation leads to the insurmountable Peak.

Whatever it takes, he will secure his own path to eternity.

Dive into a cultivation story with LitRPG apocalypse elements, including classes, skills, monster waves, and a progression system full of secrets and possibilities. Perfect for fans of Defiance of the Fall and The Primal Hunter!

Thoughts

As of writing this review, I’ve read the first published book on KU.

Ghost of the Truthseeker follows in the footsteps of Defiance of the Fall, combining system-apocalypse, LitRPG, and cultivation all into one glorious hybrid. Like Zac, our MC (Alistair) takes on an up-close-and-personal style of problem solving. Zac hits things with an axe, Alistair hits things with his fists. Comparisons are the thief of joy, so no more of that, except to say if you did like DotF, you will like GotT. (That’s right, more acronyms.)

The story starts off as you might expect, some randomised teleportation, some incursions from otherworldly species (orcs instead of demons), and Alistair getting those frantic few levels that, while not putting him on the top of the planet’s leaderboard, do put him well and truly above average.

The stats, levelling, classes and skill system allow for vastly different approaches to combat for other characters, and we see typical archetypes like the berserker, the mage, sniper, etc, all either working together or as characters to be defeated. The fights are fun and I enjoyed the action-packed pace of the book. It’s definitely in the popcorn style of novel rather than deep-and-thoughtful or slice-of-life novels, so the same group as DotF, Primal Hunter, Randidly, and the like.

In terms of technical writing, its solid. You can tell its had a professional edit, and the writing quality and prose is above similar works like DotF, but there are still some consistent issues with point-of-view swapping whenever the author wants it. It’s signposted though, so it’s not confusing, just a bit jarring for me. As an example, in a chapter from Alistair’s PoV as he fights someone else, he makes an ice layer on the water. Then the next paragraph changes PoV:

Sofia saw what he was doing and recognized that Alistair must have had a good reason for teleporting and freezing the water and knew that if they continued to plummet into the water at their current speeds, they would break the layer of ice Alistair worked so hard for.

Which is sort of clunkily used to explain things to the reader. These examples of telling rather than showing are very common in the book, a typical example below:

It was already harder for [redacted]’s Dao-infused time reversal to affect a purely spiritual being, but the dragon, whose name Alistair somehow knew as Ogarth, was also a member of an ancient species. Dragons were majestic and storied beings that could live for millions of years naturally. Ogarth was pitifully weak for a member of his species, barely a higher level than Alistair, yet voiding the Dao of a puny human who dared to encroach on one of the most fundamental Daos in the universe, the Dao of Time? Simple.

It’s never a whole chapter of “Here’s a long history lesson,” which is very nice, so I didn’t mind these little insights into the world, even if their delivery wasn’t very organic to the story. I raise it only because I’ve seen others who do not like these sort of interjections.

In terms of other plot points, if you enjoy tournament arcs, there’s actually one in this book too. It’s facilitated by a sudden teleportation in a very web serial “We’re doing this now!” change of pace, but it’s well executed and does eventually tie back into the earthbound plot.

So, to summarise:

• Strong parallels with other big hitters like Defiance of the Fall, in a good way.
• Independent MC who gets into lots of fights.
• Tournament arc shenanigans.