Soulhome is a new Cultivation series from Sarah Lin, who also wrote the Street Cultivation series. As in that one, although this is a Cultivation series, it’s got a different system to what you’d usually find. In this case to gain and use power you have to construct a house inside your soul, using sublime materials from the Nine World. It’s a really interesting system, though as with Street Cultivation you might not want to make this the first Cultivation novel you read.

The story is really interesting. Theo is from Earth, and accidentally found himself cast into the Nine Worlds. He gained allies and grew strong, only to be betrayed, everyone he knew murdered and then thrown out, back to Earth and his comatose body.

Forty Earth Years later and he’s back, in a young body but with a bitter soul on a quest for vengeance. I love this as it makes a much more interesting story. Yes, it might have been cool to see the rise of Theo before his fall but it works so well as a backstory. Meanwhile we’ve got one of my favourite tropes, someone who used to be powerful reset to zero and having to work his way back up.

It’s the first book in the series and as such is much more about setting the foundation, introducing characters and systems that’ll become important later. But it was a lot of fun to read and sets everything else up nicely for the rest of the series. If you’re interested in Cultivation novels I can’t recommend this one highly enough.