Bastion (The Immortal Great Souls #1) by Phil Tucker

The world-building is unique, sparse and intricate, weaving sci-fi speculations and progression/portal fantasy with absolute expertise; wondrous and immersive beyond measure.

One of the best fantasy books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading in my life.

Bastion is not a book with the most interesting concepts regarding metaphysics or philosophy. It’s not the best prose, with lyrical and flowery writing.

Bastion is not the most Epic or GrimDark of fantasy worlds, but a progression fantasy that imbues the best of all these and has been built from an imagination both fecund with raw talent and boundless ideas.

Bastion is not a book with the best humor or plot… just a little bit of the best among all of these. But it’s got lots of amazing battle scenes the likes of which I’m bound to reread over and over and over again, most certainly.

Synopsis

Now, enter Scorio, an Immortal Great Soul, part of people that have dedicated their souls to reincarnate for countless centuries in a city called Bastion (made up of a mile-wide cylinder that rotates perpendicular relative to the rest of the landscape with a thin strip of a glowing filament analogous to the sun).

Lying on the furthest edges of the greatest pit in hell, fighting and dying to defeat and conquer the abhorrent nightmares that infest and crawl upon this planet by ascending to the fabled Imperator that can utilize the Noumenon so that their portal back home, the planet Ettera, can finally be opened and centuries of torment, pain, bloodshed, and anguish can come to a brutal and bloody end.

Enough said… Read the book.

Thoughts

The world-building is unique, sparse, and intricate, weaving sci-fi speculations and progression/portal fantasy with absolute expertise, wondrous and immersive beyond measure.

The writing is fast-paced and relentless, gripping and spellbinding. The creatures depicted are fantastically alien and weird, like eldritch monsters from the Cthulhu mythos, while the magic system is a fusion of progression/portal fantasy with elements of LitRPG.

The dramatis personae are painted so vividly that you’ll be lost trying to distinguish between where Phil Tucker’s imagination ends and yours begin: three three-dimensional and all too human in an alternate portal planet depicting hell as has never been conceived before with elements of Dante’s levels of hell playing a structural backdrop.

Bastion is my first read of 2024, and I’m already positive that no other Fantasy (Portal, Isekai, Epic, LitRPG, or GrimDark.) can match it. I’m now off to the second installment. 

I absolutely highly recommend the first two books!