Michael Chatfield's The Ten Realms Books 1-12
A Series Review
Long about the beginning of May, I picked up a book called The Two Week Curse by Michael Chatfield. It was LitRPG and I love LitRPG so that made sense. I was also a bit frustrated because there were several titles coming that I wanted to read and they weren’t out yet. I’d kill a few days reading The Two Week Curse and I’d get to the stuff I was waiting for. But then a funny thing happened on my way to the forum:
I real the entire series, all twelve books, in one fell swoop. I hadn’t intended to. I just clicked on a link that popped up on my Facebook feed and invoked the Power of the Kindle that’s Unlimited. What not? What did I have to lose?
It turns out that I lost my mind. Or at least I would have, had I still been in possession of it at that point. It took me about two pages before I was fully locked in. That’s good for me. For a new book, in a new series, written by an author I haven’t read before, it’s usually close to fifty to a hundred pages before I really get wrapped up in things. I was all in and holding a fist full of aces much faster than I ordinarily would have been.
The story starts with a group of mercenaries in Africa, two of which are former US Army Medic Erik West and former Marine Scout Sniper Jimmy “Rugrat” Rodriguez. I love these guys. Their journey through The Ten Realms is not just captivating, it’s amazing. These two men start out the journey as people you can definitely respect and end up as something far more than that. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the whole series is a pair of character arcs for the ages. I don’t want to spoil too much but trust me, the guys you start our with are not the guys you finish with.
And it’s weird, because I’m an aspiring author myself and this series was very obviously not written the way I write, but it works because of that. Here’s what I mean: I’m a pantser. I sit down in front of my keyboard. I place my fingers on the keys. They move in a manner consistent with making words and creating a story. I don’t know a whole lot more about how that particular chapter is going to go than the average reader does, at least not before I write it. Chatfield obviously doesn’t work that way.
The Ten Realms is a story that has to have been planned from the very beginning. There’s too much that works too well for it to have been any other way. It’s not just Erik and Rugrat’s character arcs. There are a whole bunch of other arcs going on here at the same time. This series is a massively complicated narrative with a lot of pieces that have to work together for things to move along the way they do. Seriously, the whole story works in stages.
In the first stage, Erik and Rugrat are transferred from Earth to The Ten Realms via The Two Week Curse, which is also the title of the first book. There they proceed to go full n00b. They are totally n00bish n00bies of n00ballistic n00bishness. They’re so bad they could star in a TV series called N00bily N00bs. Like, do any of my gamers out there remember their first time playing an MMORPG? Yeah, Erik and Rugrat are that bad, except for the part where they might be worse. Really, guys. You’re in a MMO. If you don’t want to play a tank, find one.
But they learn quickly. And they advance quickly. And this is a cultivation series on a level like I’ve never seen before. And so I’d say the next phase is Erik and Rugrat learning how to level up and improve themselves in the new world they’ve found. It’s a thread that continues throughout the books, but it all starts here. These guys are maniacs for self improvement.
Right around the time they learn to cultivate they start picking up crafting skills. I’ve always loved crafting in MMOs and The Ten Realms provides an absolutely believable game based crafting system. It’s a huge focus for both Erik and Rugrat in the beginning of the series. While building things to use and increase their crafting skills, they build themselves as well. And the building things analogy works well heading into the next phase of the story as well.
The next phase of The Ten Realms is basically Sim City with Medieval politics mixed with some old school fighting and more crafting. There is a lot of trade and economy building here. Massive amounts of money is made and it is put into the places where the city needs to grow: Education, infrastructure and the military. Interestingly, there is no welfare and, while there is no discrimination, this isn’t a “woke” series. Those that work hard achieve and there is no lecture delivered with it. And everyone is expected to contribute. Those that won’t work are expelled. I enjoyed that about it.
The next phase is, as you would expect from a LitRPG, the war phase. We get to see everything Erik and Rugrat have done so far come to fruition. Some things work. Others don’t. This is another spot where lack of knowledge (this time of their opponents capabilities) haunts the two guys from another world. And that’s another spot where The Ten Realms shines.
Each realm is a separate planet. Erik and Rugrat start out in the First Realm. In order to make it to the Second Realm, they have to reach tenth level. And then they have to reach twentieth level to get to the Third Realm, and so on. The hard part here being that most people never rise above the realm they’re born on and so the fellas don’t really know what they’re dealing with half the time. This works as a storytelling element because the reader learns things as the characters do, but it makes life interesting for them when they run across threats that they had no way to anticipate. The war phase is a huge part of the series and takes up four whole books. That’s okay though, because Chatfield can write an amazing battle.
The last phase of The Ten Realms starts in the tenth book, ironically enough entitled The Eight Realm. (This makes sense if you consider that the Sixth and Seventh Realms got two books each.) I don’t want to talk too much about it here because spoilers, but it almost feels like the first nine books comprise a series and the sequel series is the last three books. They’re a lot shorter than the first nine books as well. They’re all excellent books but it’s not really until the end of the final tome that we get to really get a stronger tie-in with earlier books than just the fact that it’s the same character. I loved these books nonetheless, but things definitely took an unexpected turn.
I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I will say that I approve of what happened. I wasn’t sure that it was going to end up that way.
At any rate, read the thing. You’ll love it.
Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Earth Grade Dungeon Cores
The Ten Realms: A LitRPG Fantasy Series
Michael Chatfield
Self Published 2018-2022
The Two Week Curse: A LitRPG Fantasy Series (The Ten Realms Book One) is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.
The Two Week Curse: A LitRPG Fantasy Series (The Ten Realms Book One)