ARC Review: The Truth Against the World by David Corbett

The Truth Against the World
Author: David Corbett
Publication: Square Tire Books; 1st edition (June 1, 2023)

Description: A country descending into civil war...

A young artist forced to cross a nation in chaos to retrieve her stolen masterpiece...

Her guide and guardian-whose past remains strangely obscure...

Georgie O'Halloran created an artistic and literary wonder-only to have it stolen from her and published under the thief's name. Worse, it's the inspiration for a wildly popular video game that's become a favorite among the militants seeking to transform America through bloodshed.

To confront the plagiarist, Georgie must cross an entire continent erupting in violence. Her only companion: Shane Riordan, "Irish as wet grass," a fiercely loyal friend with a beautiful singing voice, an oddly encyclopedic memory-and impressive fighting skills.

It turns out, however, that Georgie isn't the only one on a cross-country quest. Shane is on a journey all his own, far beyond even Georgie's imagining.

My Thoughts: This was a genre-defying novel. Part dystopia, part fantasy, part quest story. It was an engaging title narrated by Shane Riordan who has lived again and again. He's under a curse to do so until he learns what he is supposed to learn. 

Currently, he is best friends with Georgie O'Halloran who suffers from depression. They met when she was in college and his was a janitor at the college. They became friends. She was intrigued by Celtic myths, and he told her lots of stories never revealing that they were about his past. She wrote them up and illustrated them and gave them to her lover as a gift. The lover - Reginald Feely - took her gift, claimed it was his own work, and sold it for publication. It, and the video game it inspired, became a cult hit which incited some of the factionalism that is plaguing the United States.

Shane breaks Georgie out of the hospital where she is being treated and the two take off to find Feely and gain his apology for stealing her book and intellectual property. They need to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast through a disintegrating United States filled with gangs each touting their own version of what should be. And they are being pursued by people who don't want them to interfere with the book or the video game.

I enjoyed the story once I got over the writing style which at first seemed to be filled with sentence fragments. I enjoyed learning more about Shane and what his quest was. He is definitely the main character of this one despite what the blurb seems to imply. 

Favorite Quote:

There's history for you -- so much of it happens when the vast majority of humanity is otherwise engaged. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.