Soulhome by Sarah Lin | Book Review [4.4/5]

Contains AI-Generated Portraits of Characters Within the Book

Due to the nature of book reviews, there will be some spoilers from Soulhome by Sarah Lin in this review article. I will strive to keep major plot points a mystery, but what you consider “Main Plot Material” may differ from my definition.

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Soulhome Synopsis

Genre: Progression Fantasy

Soulhome by Sarah Lin is a LitRPG novel that follows the journey of Theo, a young man from Earth who found himself spirited away to the Nine Worlds, where personal growth and power are determined by one’s “Soulhome.” This metaphysical structure is constructed using sublime materials that can be absorbed into the soul of a soul crafter, and processed/built into their unique soulhome. What the soul crafter builds determines the powers that they obtain.

With a burning desire for revenge as his drive, Theo intends to get stronger as quickly as possible. But his forty years of planning on Earth go up in smoke when he attempts to ignite his star core, resulting in an immediate explosion, destroying almost all of his initial work.

Can Theo overcome the gravity of this unexpected setback, and salvage the ruined foundation at the heart of his soulhome?

Character Introduction Segment

Theo is the main character of the story and is originally from Earth. He stumbled upon a door into the nine worlds and was guided into a fantastical world by a cloaked individual known as Vistgil. There, he gained access to his soulhome, and made it to stronghold tier, with a strong focus on speed.

Unfortunately, that focus would be his downfall, as he and his group of powerful friends entered a light-less world with a white sky and a black sun, a place not part of the nine that was overridden with titan-class demons. However, something new roamed the eerie landscape, and it was far stronger than a titan-class demon. This fourth tier of demon wiped out his friends, and he was pushed back through the door where he was promptly betrayed by Vistgil, who killed him…

…Only for him to wake up in his old body on earth.

However, he retained his memories and worked to find his way back to the Nine, ultimately succeeding forty years later, when he enters into Tatian during a spatial reality storm. But, he was back to the beginning, with a clean-slate Soulhome. This time, he was prepared to build the strongest foundation he could think of, gain strength, and attain revenge for his fallen comrades.

Fiyu is from one of the Nine Worlds, Ichil, a cold and sunless world that hosts almost no natural light. This environment results in her senses becoming very sensitive to subtle differences, which results in her being completely overwhelmed when she falls into a spatial rip that sends her to Tatian. This is because Tatian hosts an, admittedly gentle, sun, and the light produced by that sun is significantly higher intensity than…you know, no star at all. Imagine being outside in the dark, and then suddenly a car’s headlights flash directly into your eyes on high beams. It’s kind of like that, but far worse, and she is effectively, and painfully, blinded as a result.

Theo encounters Fiyu, and using his experiences from his past life, he can help her calm down from panic. He helps her find a way to limit the sun’s brightness utilizing a very dark stone wrapped in dark fabric to block her eyes.

Nauda is the leader of the Tatian family to which Theo is assigned. She is Tatian, but with a unique upbringing that mixes sarcasm with genuine praise, showing that Tatian culture isn’t as monolithic as initially suggested. But This is merely hinted at throughout the book.

She, Fiyu, and Theo make up the three powerhouses of their family, and they synergize well – A Restrictive technique from her, coupled with reversing or tripling gravity with Theo, and a light blast from Fiyu. It’s a devastating combo used effectively during several Demon invasions, and in the mock battles that decide who wins access to archcrafter materials.

A Strong Focus on Soulhome Development

The very foundation of Soulhome by Sarah Lin is Soulhome development. Specifically, the building of Soulhomes uses a special type of matter known as Sublime Materials. These materials, when absorbed into the Soulhome, allow the “soul crafter” to build a structure that enhances their capabilities, or grants them special abilities. Well-designed soul homes can dramatically increase this effect, while poorly designed ones limit the maximum potential that a soul crafter is capable of.

How Sublime Materials Work

Sublime materials contain Cantae, a type of energy that can be controlled once absorbed and is found only within sublime materials. The amount of Cantae in these materials varies and is separated into several tiers. If someone tries to absorb material with too much Cantae, it becomes dangerous, and could even lead to the annihilation of everything they’ve built, forcing them to start again from scratch, or even death in the worst case.

Some sublime materials can generate Cantate at a set rate, which can be amplified using certain other materials in tandem within the soul, allowing improved endurance in battle. Building a logical structure in one’s Soulhome enables the Cantae to be tinged with the intent of the soul crafter, exhibiting different effects based on that intent.

For example, if two soul crafters absorbed a Fire-based sublime material, one soul crafter could craft a room that could allow them to hurl fireballs at their opponents. However, the other soulcrafter could instead focus on a specific aspect of fire, say, Heat. When a room is crafted to harness the heat potential of the fire-aspected sublime material, they could then create a dome of heat, which could be employed to be a defensive use of the same material.

This system allows unique applications of the same materials and concepts, making characters within the story stand out from each other based on their powers.

These are all cool concepts, and I enjoyed how the system works in this series.

Soulcrafter Tiers

Soulcrafting follows a logical progression path based on stories in a building. For each level a soul crafter ascends, they become substantially more powerful than before. The levels mentioned within this book are as follows:

• Soulcrafter – The base tier consists of the foundation and the walls and ceiling of the first floor. The foundation is the most important part of soulcrafting because if the foundation is too weak, there is a limit on how high a soulcrafter can ascend.
• Archcrafter – The second tier of soulcrafting, supported by the foundation.
• Ruler – The third tier, which is the highest tier represented within the first book by one of the characters.
• Authority – The fourth tier is considered extremely rare in Tatian.
• Stronghold – The fifth tier, and the level that Theo was at at the start of the book before he is killed, causing his soul to return to his body on earth.
• Dominion – The sixth tier, and not much is known about it by the end of the first book, only that it exists.

Theo isn’t a Young and Overpowered Powerhouse

I enjoyed the fact that the main character Theo isn’t some young and wide-eyed powerhouse in this book series. It is a man in his late forties (soul-wise) that is cold, and cynical, yet has a soft spot for people he cares about. He desires revenge, and that is reflected in his soul. He originally planned to base his power around the concept of starlight and plasma, but that failed spectacularly in a colossal explosion akin to a supernova that rocked his Soulhome to its foundation. So his power is based around the idea of a singularity, the idea that his guiding star exploded, and all that was left was a black hole sucking up everything greedily.

Of course, at the first stage of power, that only means limited manipulation of gravity. As he refines his Soulhome, that manipulation increases in intensity and the number of concurrent fields he can control at a time.

The Plot Revolves Around Competition for Archcrafter Materials

For most of Soulhome, the plot revolves around a competition between the displaced people who fell into Tatian during the spatial disturbance. This competition is kindling to motivate the soulcrafters to rapidly improve, which would result in new, powerful additions to the farmguards. Farmguards are the soulcrafters on Tatian who protect the villages from demons and are general peacekeepers.

There is more than meets the eye with this organization, however, and things take a turn for the unexpected – a welcome twist to the story. I won’t spoil the specifics, but suffice it to say that it was quite entertaining to read.

Classes Introduce and Establish the Soulcrafting System

In the process of readying themselves for mock battles with the competitors, the soulcrafters attend classes that are separated by varying levels – from the basics that teach the fundamentals, to advanced courses that go into the nuanced nature of sublime materials and the blueprints they are used in. But this sort of thing is only briefly touched on, as Theo already knows all the basics and even advanced solutions. In essence, Sarah Lin spares us the whole “magic school” phase that is often a trope in stories like this.

It’s essentially down to Theo skipping classes, though. Which is funny, when you think about it. Everyone sort of assumes he’s a dolt at the beginning because he isn’t making much visible progress on his Soulhome, despite showing instances of advanced knowledge here and there the entire time.

Protagonist Experiences Significant Setbacks

As Theo was originally a Stronghold-tier soul crafter in his first life, he didn’t get much use out of the classes but was generally barred from attending the more advanced classes, much to his dismay, since there is something wrong with his Soulhome. This resulted in far slower progress than one would expect from someone who has had forty years to plan out various blueprints for his Soulhome.

The apex of this setback, a sort of stellar explosion of his Cantae-generating material, actually caused Theo to become depressed for weeks. This happens because he realizes all his careful planning was all for naught, and that he’d have to adapt to overcome this setback. And he pivots wonderfully, using a scientific concept as the basis for his soulhome (the stellar remnant of an exploded star, the black hole.)

Yes, he literally turned the exploding star leaving behind a massive gravity well concept into his power.

The writing style of Soulhome is one of its stronger facets and is likely the reason I was able to enjoy the book to the degree that I did.

Bordeom-free and Entertaining

At no point while reading Soulhome did I feel bored – something of an amazing change coming from Scarlet Citadel. This fact allowed me to sail through the book in a couple of days. This is likely due to the writing style of the book, which held hints of mystery and blended scientific concepts with magic. In addition, the main character is somewhat relatable (though not nearly to the same degree as Qing from Qing’s Quest.)

Add in the fact that the dialogue in the story felt natural (outside of Tatians being…well, overly nice and too compliment-y), and you have a recipe for something great!

The Motivations of the Character are Clear

Losing friends is one thing, but Theo dying in the first few chapters of the book to someone who effectively betrayed him paints a pretty clear picture of what drives Theo to seek power in his second life. I pictured Vistgil as the dark wanderer from Diablo, a cloak-covered man who houses the soul stone of Diablo in his forehead. In case you don’t know what that is, well take a look at this.

Pacing is where Soulhome gets a bit muddied. For much of the book, Theo doesn’t make much progress on his own Soulhome, due to something being wrong with his soul. As a result of this, the pacing suffers quite a bit regarding the personal growth of the main protagonist. With that said, this does allow the spotlight to shine on the supporting characters of the Story, Fiyu and Nauda.

This decision to limit the speed of Theo’s growth helps to solidify the fact that Theo isn’t some OP main character who can steamroll through anything, so it does assist in the character development aspect. Still, it’s exciting to see the MC get powered up, and when he does eventually get to that point, I became thoroughly engrossed in the story.

Diverse areas, and interesting concepts

The strongest aspect of Soulhome is its world-building. The idea that this story contains worlds in parallel dimensions with vastly different environments and cultures is intriguing. We only got to see Tatian, with its temperate environment and admittedly creepy-pleasant residents in detail in this particular book, but we got to see glimpses of the lightless world filled with demons and a sense of mystery, and the scorched world of Arbai briefly. But we are told there are at least eleven worlds, including the nine main dimensions, the lightless world, and Earth.

Add in the soulcrafting system, and the mechanics of how that system intertwines worldbuilding and character development, and Soulhome shaped up to become one of the most interesting reads I’ve encountered in a while.

I Worry For The Future to Maintain The Worldbuilding

While it works for Soulhome to create a sense of societal evolution and hierarchy, having so many worlds that differ to such a degree is a risk for the future. I worry that each world won’t receive the thoughtful development in the future necessary to maintain this rating in later books. The whole story revolves around the idea of this man from Earth trying to stumble his way back into the nine worlds for forty years. That instills the sense that getting to the Nine Worlds is an incredibly difficult task, at least for people from Earth. Hell, Theo only encountered it the first time with the help of someone from the Nine Worlds.

I’m hopeful, because, while I understand that having a multiverse-type setting means that the scope zooms out from the one world, the others fill in the gap, especially given the motivations to gain power that the main character has. His goals are bigger than just settling on Tatian. He is aiming for the soulcrafting Apex of power, and that means he will outgrow the worlds he encounters, and their development won’t matter. But that fact doesn’t change the risk of such an undertaking.

I think that, so long as Sarah can maintain a strong driving factor to ascend to greater heights of power and development, she can weave it together into one cohesive story – the timeline of Theo’s experiences in his goal to get revenge for his fallen friends. It won’t be easy, but I’m here for it!

A Much-Needed Diversion

There is no doubt that I thoroughly enjoyed reading Soulhome by Sarah Lin. Of course, I’ve been neck deep in the LitRPG subgenre of Progression Fantasy, with book series like Defiance of the Fall, and Divine Apostasy taking up much of my time. Those series are great in their own right, but sometimes, you just need to switch things up. I think that is one of the contributing factors to why I was able to sail through this book.

The Protagonist is Grounded, Relatable and Interesting

Additionally, the main character isn’t some overpowered Six-fold Archmage protagonist like Varic Vallenar from The Captain: The Last Horizon – he’s grounded in the rules of the world. Don’t get me wrong, reading how the battles go, his power does seem a touch powerful, however, this power has limits that are immediately encountered by those at the same level he is on. And they have their own powerful abilities, in turn, just ones that are flavored differently. It’s a struggle, not a steamroll.

There is nothing wrong with a steamroll from time to time, I’m not trashing that – I definitely enjoy those. But it just hits differently when there is suspense in the form of a pitched battle, a struggle to survive. Something about that struggle resonates with my survival instincts, and I pay rapt attention to every word, soaking up the story in the process, I really enjoyed that experience.

Overall, I’m certain that Soulhome has earned a spot near the top of the list of my favorite books. It has an interesting story, and the characters don’t seem trope-y. I mean, yeah, I can’t help but picture Fiyu as B-2 from Neir Automata, but with black hair instead, but I think almost everyone would make that connection who has played that game. But that’s beside the point. Everything mostly feels fresh and mysterious, and I’m really really curious about what kind of encounter Theo will have with Vistgil in the future – will he be ready to handle him? Or will he encounter him too early, and lose the fight?

I’m eager to find out, and I’ve started reading the next book in the line, Rainhorn, to satisfy this curiosity. Review out soon!