An epic LitRPG saga for fans of The Lord of The Rings, Grimgar, and Dungeons and Dragons.
Will refused to admit to the HR lady at Radical Interactive that he’d never played their debut virtual reality MMORPG The Realm. From what he’d seen in videos and heard from reviewers, the game sucked. With the company’s failed attempt at entering the gaming industry, they switched their sights to focus on smaller scale educational programs.
Being a beta tester for Radical Interactive was not the dream job that Will had envisioned, but he had hoped it would get his foot in the door to one day becoming a graphic designer for the company. As he filled out his new hire paperwork, he never realized that he was literally signing his life away.
Now a phenomenally successful company, Radical Interactive was secretly working on something behind closed doors that would change both the medical and gaming industries forever. The Realm was reborn. The only problem was that it wasn’t a game—at least not to those trapped inside.
Dumped into a fantasy world filled with nightmarish monsters, awe-inspiring magic, and way more walking than Will thought he was physically capable of as a nerdy desk jockey, he has to navigate the perils of The Realm and unravel the mystery of how he came to be here and how to get out. Fantasy meets real-life consequences in a game that could mean the difference between life and death. But first, Will must get over being a noob…
My Opinion: 259 pages, $0.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
The blurb over-hypes this story. It’s neither epic, or filled with nightmarish monsters. It’s slice of life and the MC fights pixies and goblins.
The story is about 10% woe is me, then he’s stuck in the game , he has to figure out the game rules, get a bit of training, and goes on some slice of life adventures. There are goals the MC has, but it’s mostly him following others as they deal with dark happenings on their island. There is some semi regular action, but there’s more talking and describing of stuff than anything. After the 75% mark, the story takes a turn for the boring. After that point, there’s no further action, instead there's a lot of talking and planning on doing stuff, but very little actually happens and it serves as more of a setup for what’s supposed to occur in the next book.
The RPG mechanics are seen throughout the story, but there is nothing new there either. Stat sheet, skills, item descriptions, etc. There’s not a lot of combat in the story and it can be a bit wand wavy sometimes. For example, the MC one shots a boar a couple levels higher than himself with a single shot from a bow and arrow. Even assuming added sneak attack damage (only 1% extra damage), nothing in the game mechanics says this should be possible. The weapon he uses is a starter bow. He hit the boars side, so not a critical hit. Only a chapter before, he’d struggled to kill dark pixies his level.
Where the story stands out is in character development. The characters in the story, whether the MC or the friends he makes are well fleshed out, have clear points of view but are not just all good or all bad. Character’s relationships with each other are complicated and the world building, at least on a social level, is richly described.
Overall, nothing in the game mechanics, the action, or the quests the MC goes on are special. I thought the characters were well written characters. However, the story just turned boring after the 75% mark and it lost me.
Score: 6 out of 10
The Realm Between: The Curse: A LitRPG Saga (Book 1)