If you are here to learn more about nonfiction gardening audiobooks, we have unfortunately misled you. Much like how our “LitRPG Unwrapped: Crunchy vs. Creamy” blog has nothing to do with peanut butter sandwiches, this blog sadly has no helpful tips on how to maintain your vegetables.
That’s our bad.
It does, however, get into some pretty cool stuff about cultivation fantasy and what makes stories that fall into this category so special. We’ll also share some of our favorite recent and upcoming audiobook releases that would be excellent places to start in this exciting and immersive subgenre.
Ready to begin?
Suit up and get your pack ready… we’re going on a hero’s journey!
Often rooted in Eastern mythology and Xianxia and Wuxia stories, these tales feature heroic main characters who grow stronger by cultivating (see what they did there?) their spiritual, mental, or physical abilities. This cultivation process varies from story to story, but typically it involves a mix of intense training and meditation to master mystical techniques and reach higher realms of power. This can be accomplished through a series of epic quests featuring bigger and more challenging hurdles along the way. Much like in real life, our hero or heroine has times when they think they can’t do it anymore and maybe they are too weak, but their drive for internal growth keeps pushing them forward.
This all-too-relatable drive to do and be better each day is what makes these characters so easy to root for. They often start humbly, with little to no power or resources to speak of, but through their spiritual and inner growth, they can achieve their goals. This focus on internal character growth instead of more “gamified” leveling up is the key difference between cultivation fantasy and its subgenre sister, progression fantasy. An easy way to understand more about what is considered cultivation fantasy is to place it alongside progression fantasy and compare the two!
A great example of progression fantasy in pop culture is Sword Art Online – a popular Japanese light novel series by Reki Kawahara, later adapted into anime, manga, and games. The story follows Kirito, a skilled gamer trapped in a virtual reality MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) called “Sword Art Online,” as he tries to survive and escape alongside other players. Characters like Kirito must “level up” by defeating monsters and completing quests. This progression increases their strength, agility, and abilities, but it’s not spiritually based as in cultivation fantasy. Instead, these players enhance their skills through experience points, skill mastery, and gaining better equipment or abilities as they advance in the virtual world.
On the flip side, Tao Wong’s widely celebrated A Thousand Li series follows a traditional Xianxia/Wuxia journey where practitioners seek to harness spiritual energy (or Qi) to achieve immortality and greater power. The main character of this series, Wu Ying, starts off as a simple peasant, but after being recruited to join a martial arts sect, he embarks on a journey of cultivation, aiming to increase his power and understanding of the world around him. Striving for personal improvement and dealing with the political, social, and mystical complexities along the way, Wu Ying is the perfect example of a cultivation fantasy hero.
You see, cultivation fantasy isn’t just about the loot or the power gained when the journey is over, it’s about the journey itself and how it changes us along the way. Much like in gardening (hey, we talked about it after all!), most of a gardener’s story happens between planting and sowing.
Read on for some thrilling cultivation fantasy audiobook
recommendations perfect for any hero at heart!
Chain of Feathers
Book 1 in the Iron Tyrant series
Written by Seth Ring, narrated by Ramon De Ocampo
Roll over and die, or become so strong nothing can stop him.
Cast into a brutal military camp by his once loving master, Mateo feels like the last six wonderful years of his life have been a lie. With the mysteries surrounding him growing, Mateo knows that his only option is to become one of the supernaturally powerful Duelists and grow in power until he can take his fate into his own hands.
That plan is thwarted from the beginning when he gets stuck with the lowest-ranked Root Card against his will, ensuring that his growth as a Duelist will always be excruciatingly slow. To make matters worse, the camp he has been thrown into is completely cutthroat, and survival isn’t guaranteed by a long shot.
Dawn of the Density God
Book 2 in The Density God series
Written by ToraAKR, narrated by J.S. Arquin
A slow burn cultivation LitRPG with a magic system that will blow your socks off—or your arm, or both your legs…
Jiran is just a child when he receives shattered, imperfect memories of a past life. Nestled inside these emotionless visions is a magic very different to the density and mana he knows, the magic of science.
The empire stands alone against the relentless beasts of Madra. Their only means of survival is harnessing the density that saturates her surface, a magic they cannot possibly understand. Will Jiran realize he holds the key to unlocking humanity’s infinite potential before they are all wiped out?
Immortality Starts with Generosity
Book 1 in the Immortality Starts with Generosity series
Written by Plutus, narrated by J.S. Arquin
A lost soul from Earth transmigrates into a world of cultivation and finds himself in the body of a playboy noble who is wasting his life.
Except Chen Haoran doesn’t have any memories, can’t let anyone know he’s not the same person, and is immediately involved in a conspiracy with another powerful noble family involving the downfall of a prominent young genius.
Luckily, he came to this world with a power: whatever he gives to someone as a gift he’ll get it back 100 times better.
His first target? His new wife, the former top young genius.
Seared
Book 1 in the Seared series
Written by Robyn Wideman and the Scribes Of Sulterra, narrated by J.S. Jay Lai
This exciting coming-of-age, progression, and cultivation series is perfect for fans of series like Cradle, A Thousand Li, and He Who Fights with Monsters.
When Jace was a newborn baby, he was branded with a metal bracer to prevent cultivation. Destined to live a life of slavehood for a crime he didn’t commit, he can only dream of one day becoming a powerful cultivator and leaving his shackles behind. But when danger threatens the life of his sister, Jace decides to take fate into his own hands.
Wandering Cultivator
Book 1 in the Wandering Cultivator of the Broken Empire series
Written by Robyn Wideman and the Scribes Of Sulterra, narrated by J.S. Jay Lai
This thrilling Western Cultivation fantasy has progression, monsters, and no harem.
Calin has a bright future as the top Alchemy student in the entire Academy, and the clans are lining up to woo him. But when tragedy hits his family, Calin must make a choice. Stay at the academy and continue his rise as a powerful cultivator or leave and risk everything to help his little sister.
Unblood
Book 1 in the Sulterra: Unblood series
Written by Robyn Wideman and the Scribes Of Sulterra, narrated by Nick Mondelli
For fans of Will Wight’s Cradle series, Tao Wong’s A Thousand Li series, and Apollos Thorne’s Heaven’s Laws series, this epic new progression fantasy story is a Western cultivation fantasy novel with light romantic elements.
Becoming a cultivator is hard—being an adopted child makes it even harder. Kiran must overcome his position if he wants to succeed and challenge the heavens. When a tragic mistake unlocks a powerful artifact that changes time and space, Kiran’s life is forever changed. Danger brings opportunity, and for a young cultivator, there is nothing like pressure to force them to adapt and grow stronger!
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