Megacosmic Rift: A Dark Sci-Fi Epic Fantasy

Torth, Book 4

By: Abby Goldsmith

Narrated by: George Newbern

Four prophesized heroes must band together to obliterate an evil galactic empire—they're outnumbered by the trillions, but are they outwitted?

Ariock, a superhuman among men, destroyed the Torth Homeworld. Since then, the massive throng of survivors—refugees, freed slaves, and cave dwellers—have been docked in orbit in an undefended starship, one small war behind them. But when the telepathic Torth, thirty trillion strong, catch a whisper of their location, the greatest of all wars will descend.

For the exiles stranded in space, food and water is running out, and as Ariock struggles to regain his power, hope for a safe new world is draining away too—though not for Ariock's great-grandfather Garrett, who heeds the visions of an oracle outlined in a book of prophecies. Centuries ago, the oracle foretold of four titans, each defined by a dominant trait. Now they have finally come together as one.

Ariock is Strength, already proved time and again as a messianic force to be reckoned with. Garrett is Will, a legendary being of extraordinary resolve and determination. The ethereal Evenjos, an ever-evolving goddess-empress imprisoned for millenniums by the Torth, is Transformation. And Thomas, the physically fragile but uncannily clever supergenius, is Wisdom.

As prophesized, a clear path to victory lies ahead. But there's a wrinkle. One veer from that path, one tiny misstep by any of the four heroes, one minor lapse in trust, and they're doomed to fail. Lest their starship become a floating tomb, they must prepare to work a miracle. And as the Torth amass an armada of battleships at every temporal stream, they're going to need one.

The fourth volume of the hit sci-fi fantasy series—with more than 750,000 views on Royal Road—now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible!

©2024 Abby Goldsmith (P)2024 Podium Audio

The world building is amazing

Parts 1 and 2 hooked me. Felt sad at the tragedy in part 3. Part 4 made up for it and made me smile. Can’t wait for book 5

Absolutely amazing storytelling

I can’t believe the series just keeps getting better and better, the storytelling is incredible. I am shocked at every twist and just extremely impressed that she’s able to keep with heavy hitters every time. I wish all the books were out already!

Worth while purchase

The author, Amy Goldsmith, does a great job creating characters with depth, as well as interesting world building. Unfortunately, all world building is rather vague. The rules that are created by the author in one chapter are broken by the author in the next. Rules seem to change willy-nilly, whenever it’s convenient for the author to reach the stories next objective. Which I would consider lazy writing.

Also, if you remove each character’s wishy-washy self examination, as well as each character’s run-on dialogue of self doubt, your 15 hour novel would become a 2 hour short story - or, rather, the 6 Book Series would become a single, well written, Standalone, Novel. The author seems to have a problem moving the story forward, getting bogged down in repetitive self doubt ad nauseam; she writes like she’s making taffy.

However, as annoying as all that is, the author does create very likable characters. So likable that I’m “reading” the series one novel after the other.

Good Continued Story Building

The author continues to build the story to be more intriguing and the characters continue to be likable and unique. There tends to be lots of repetition with certain statements, phrases, and facts about the world. A character’s inner thoughts state something and then a couple sentences later, the same thing is stated again. When it’s inner thoughts, it makes it seem like it’s assumed the reader wasn’t paying attention the first time, and when two characters are communicating it can make it seem like the first character thinks the second is dumb when that’s clearly not how the characters actually treat each other. Most times, it doesn’t detract from the story, it just gets annoying when it happens fairly often. Overall I still like the story and the series has developed pretty well. I was surprised by a few things in this book, which I enjoyed.

The performance is always great with the different accents and voices. Sometimes there’s inconsistencies in voices when there’s lots of dialog where one character is speaking but the distinct voice of another character is used.