The Two Week Curse: A LitRPG Fantasy Series: The Ten Realms, Book 1

I read through the whole series before giving this review.It’s worth it. Must read.I haven’t read this genre before but this was fecking awesome. I enjoyed each book as it follows our two misfit hero’s Eric and Rugrat, getting swept into a different realm and their many misadventures.It’s good guys over bad or rather questionable characters. It’s die hard military brothers looking out for each other. It’s sacrifice and pain and loss. But there are good times also to balance out the bad. And lots of battles and big guns. And crazy, lots and lots of crazy.It’s really nice to read from an author who has been there and done that, that readers can identify with, and characters you want to cheer on. I will re read the series again it was so good.

Combination of good military/mercenary novel and LitRPG. Not stat heavy, but definitely story heavy. Like a good thick steak, this book was devoured with every bite being full of flavor, savored and hungering for more. Great medicine details show where the author's expertise lies. A little bit Mary Sue, but isn't the whole genre? Seriously, I really enjoyed this and I want more.

Blunt spoiler free opinion.. So long as you don't mind applying a rather broad suspension of disbelief. It's an entertaining read.Spoilers throughout review-First, as long as you ignore that two military grunts some how have next level city building knowledge. You can kind of enjoy the story. I'm sorry, maybe I'm in the minority with this opinion. But the idea that "I've seen this on TV" or "I've watched/read this somewhere during my free time, so I somehow have the basic idea how to do this" doesn't work for me. I've spent eight years in the military, I'm sorry to say, but most don't know their left from their right. Let alone how to design a city from scratch.I'm a real person. I've watch documentaries, I've read books, I've studied about ancient cities and ancient technology in my life. I still wouldn't be able to replicate in detail a single thing I've read about. Much less build an entire town from scratch, based off the small clips of knowledge I did retain, in JUST >10< days. (It wasn't even two weeks)Another issue I had with that last "Quest" ark, was how, exactly, did he train everyone? Even assuming that the manuals and training material was next level information. How can they read? I have to assume that in the first realm books are horded by the rich and nobility. Therefore, farmer John in little town nowhere on the far reaches of society, isn't going to be able to read, how would he? Books are so rare he would never have had one. So how is he now suddenly able to read and understand the information?Another thing I don't understand. Is during that "Quest" to rescue the town. How does that apply to every single student who entered into the trials? If each student went through the same EXACT same trials... Did each student get sent to a different real life town that was in danger and faced a wave of hordes? Or was that same town somehow magically used over and over again until someone actually saved it?This book also suffers quite a bit from info-dumping and in the most cliché and arduous manner possible to read. It's literally, character X opens book and reads { insert page long info dump here } or "X asks Y how B works" Y Says, "{ insert page long info dump here } ". It's a bit boring to read, and to be honest. I skip/skim it as it really doesn't add anything to the story that I would be lost without.And at the VERY end of the book. Another thing that kind of randomly stood out. Was when the two thought "but she was smart and she could think quickly". This doesn't make sense to me... They just met the girl minutes before hand and only talked VERY briefly. How can they deduce that she is "smart and quick thinking"?In my opinion, I felt there were some rather large gaps in logic in the story.This didn't make sense to me... I must assume that every realm has farmers, as everyone needs to eat in each realm. The farmers are arguably the least powerful in each realm. With each realm having billions of people.. If people can move between the realms, as long as they have monster cores or magic stones. Why wouldn't some nefarious farmer from say, the 10th realm, who wants to increase his lot in life, not move down to the first realm and utterly dominate everyone? Even the weakest farmer in the 10th realm would be more powerful than anyone or any monster in the lower realms, no? What's to stop them from going to the 1st realm and taking control?Why would you want to be a poor farmer in the 10th realm, if you can be a rich and powerful king or ruler in the 2nd, 3rd ,4th ,5th realm and so on...? Maybe this will be explained later on, but it just really popped out to me... For that matter, why wouldn't ANY evil person with power, not just move to the lower realms?

I was debating with myself alot about how to rate this book, finally i decided to give it a 3/5 because i liked Emerilia and based on that previous series i think the author will deliver a better second book in this new series and i am not ready to doom it yet.But if i were to judge this book on it's own merits it definitely drops to a 2/5.Erik and Rugrat both serve in a mercenary force in Africa guarding shady copper mine owners, they run into an ambush in which they get hit with a mysterious "two weeks curse" and Erik get's blown up with an IED.This curse gives them interfaces like in a video game, stats, access to magic, healing powers and after two weeks teleports them and their surrounding area to an unknown place. standard LitRPG opening, nothing new..Once they arrive to this new place then it becomes interesting, the fact that they are together with gear and expected to be teleported in the first place made this starting point unique.I enjoyed the two characters synergy that was going on, them learning about the new world's and it's mechanics, deciding on their path together and later on trying to find ways to survive better as one unit while becoming stronger, it was great!And then in the most interesting point of the book (just before the half mark) when it's all about to kick into high gear it grinds to a halt instead in one of the most unoriginal, uninspired and unnecessary "quest" that managed to contradict parts of the story and was completely unbelievable in how it was accomplished (for more details see the spoiler section below).If the book would have continued on the same path of it's first half or if this quest was done in a believable manner it would have been a much more enjoyable read then it is now.Another thing to be improved in this book is it's editing and errors, while it's not bad as to be even close to unreadable status it still could have used more time in that department.I still intend to buy the second book in the series and give it another shot, it's an Okay read at the moment with high chances of improvement later on.My Major Gripes With The "Quest" - SPOILER ALERT!Erik and Rugrat get teleported outside a small backwater farming village that is about to be attacked by a horde of thousands of high level crazed animals with some intelligence and super strength.The village has dirt roads, a wall that is made out of mud and buildings made out of "wood and dirt", it has a population of 181 farmers and village folk including elderly and children, some hunters, 20 guards that are not much better then the hunters and 1 Novice blacksmith.They have total control of the village and the time of the attack is in TWO WEEKS.In these mere two weeks, Erik and Rugrat helped the villagers to accomplish this:- gathering food supply and water that will last for 4 months.- fortifying the walls, make traps and obstacles and build watchtowers.- heal everyone, fix sanitation and build latrines and showers.- craft 100+ crossbows, dozens of spears and thousands of arrows FROM SCRATCH.- gather enough wood for all the buildings and weapons (there was nothing on where and how they got all the metal from)- form a military style militia force with officers, full training in weapons and discipline with different types of units that includes: range units, sharpshooters, heavy infantry, medics, mages and an elite quick response team.- power level most of the village from an average level of 5 to an average of 10.- have the villagers succeed in running most of everything on their own in a way that leaves Erik and Rugrat plenty of time to multiply their own power and levels while also advancing their chosen profession.All in two bloody weeks, "how?!" you ask, very simple, books! not skill books in which the knowledge is instant and instinctive, regular books, called - MANUALS!Never mind the fact that none of these farmers in this backwater village have even seen a book before, because books in this world are considered treasures, they are horded by the wealthy and the strong so it may only be passed and sold to other wealthy and strong individuals.Never mind the previous mention in THIS book that most of the simple folk are illiterate, something that is very logical when a single book can cost years of labor in silver.But all the residents of this very special "Village of The Savant Farmers" can not only read and write, they can immediately comprehend and act upon what is written in these manuals and pass the knowledge downwards like god damn robots."We need better weapons? no problem! let's just buy a few manuals for the blacksmith and in 2 days he will level up from novice to apprentice on his own""We bought 50 swords and shields for close combat, so let's buy some sword and shield manuals and give them to the officer in charge, he will read the manuals, pass the information downward to his soldiers via training and in a single day we have a full unit that knows how to fight with shield and swords together and even form shield walls and other formations.Just buy a manual for every need that occurs, pass it on to a farmer that never seen a book before, and that farmer knows what to do in a day and will teach the others!This entire part of the book (a good third of the book) was absolutely ludicrous while somehow managing to be both agonizingly slow in pace and feel rushed!Just unimaginative, unbelievable and self contradicting quest that made me roll my eyes so much.

It's light litrpg, not much status or skill system show but much more interesting, the two mcs with a no nonsense attitude because of the army story give this a new breath and the kingdom building it's basically a army base management but in a medieval world

I bought the 4-books edition for my Kindle as I adore videogames and the concept seemed to be very promising.But, when reading these books, I asked myself several questions:- What language is this?- Is this a (very, very bad) translation from french, german or any other language?- Why didn't the author use the spell/grammar checking on his computer?- Who is responsable for the missing letters/words/sentences? The author? The publisher? My Kindle?- Why did I spend money on this b.s. ?Honestly, not everybody who can read a users guide for videogames should try to write a book of his own. My teachers would have killed me if I would have presented such a crap in an essay. Maybe it's all about a bad translation. Maybe it's because of the transcription to an e-book having gone completely wrong.I'm not "native English-speaking" and I wouldn't dare to publish a book written in English without asking several competent readers to check my work. So I really don't understand how anybody could have published this ... I don't know how to call it. I entered several sentences in my word processing programm and more than 90% of the mistakes have been found. I don't know about specific Canadian or Scottish rules, but it seems to me that the author does not care at all about singular/plural or present/past. You really need to read some paragraphs several times in order ot catch the ideas. And I'm not even speaking about the style or the prose!I give one star beause I really, really love videogames, especially MMOs. But I just can't understand how Amazon (or anybody else) can publish/sell such a crap!Just buy these books if you don't care about grammar/spelling/style/logical structure/repetitions etc.This revision also counts for the books 2 to 4. I will not buy any more books from this serie because I simply hate reading books with so many mistakes and such a bad style.

This book cant be really considered solely a LitRPG book as it has many wuxia themes incorporated in it, but that is what makes it so interesting and a great read.For a fan of both styles it is my first time coming across a book which has bothe styles in one and so I realy loved the book. But not only that, the setting is well thought out and it has strong character building. Also the story line seems fluid with no breaks or jumps which can be often seen in other LitRPG or Wuxia style books. I have also not noticed any blatant/obvious spelling or grammar mistakes often found in the wuxia genre (which is due to it not having been translated from another language, but still nice to have a well written book).The book is great!I love the characters!I enjoyed the story!I loved the crossover of wuxia and LitRPG!And it is always interesting to see modern weaponry/technology vs old (with the added wuxia/LitRPG themes)Any way I really enjoyed this book and its definetly now one of my favorites. Looking forward to the next book!

Most current Litrpg books choose to let their story play out in a game world, where it is clear that it is a game. The author instead choose a setting similar to wuxia novels while still keeping game elements such at status screens. The result is a very good amalgam of the best of both worlds. Especially the worldbuilding is well thought out.Character development starts strong but sadly falls off a bit in the end. There are no noticeable plotholes. The progression of skills is logical and leads itself well to later expansion.Overall the book is a very good read and i look forward to its sequels.p.s. i hardly ever leave reviews and i've read several hundred kindle books. Take from that what you will.

If you are looking for an Author with the skill bringing the life of soldiers in the real world to a fantasy world an still keep it non political AND write it life like then you have just faund him. He can wirte it like every nerd (except for those with sexual frustration) would love, while still having good jokes and very good characters main and side characters are both very well thought and everyone is equally important as Mr Chatfield isnt forgeting that the side characters have dreams and desires too.Keep it on Mr Chatfield!!! You just got another Fan!!LeseRatte out