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The Two Week Curse
- A Military Portal Fantasy LitRPG Series
- Narrated by: Todd Menesses
- Series: The Ten Realms: A Military Portal Fantasy LitRPG Series, Book 1
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
Publisher's Summary
In the 10 Realms....
....the only stat that mattered was strength.
Was that about to change?
Erik knew one thing after dropping in, when he first saw the numbers before his eyes, the rumors about the "cursed" were true. He was in another world. Survival wasn’t assured.
Cultivate, get skills, grow abilities, or die.
His old life, as a combat medic, had been hard, but he had learned some valuable lessons. And he wasn’t alone. His best friend, a marine recon sniper, like always, was right by his side.
Could they figure out this fantasy world?
What does it mean to ascend?
How will they master the magic of this strange place?
You’ll love this LitRPG/Gamelit, because of the mixing of Eastern Cultivation and society with western magic and modern ideas. It will hook you from chapter one.
Get it now.
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What listeners say about The Two Week Curse
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Doug Ross
- 2019-05-03
Weak start...but wait theres more!
I almost returned this book, the beginning of this book was terrible, it did not hook me at all, I found the characters irritating. But based on the good reviews I kept listening and im glad I did, this book is great and the two main characters are great. This would have been a 5 star review except for the terrible start to this book. I also did not like the narrator at first, he possibly sucked due to a weak start to the book? Idk. But he gets much better and ends up being great to listen to. Now piss off and go listen to a book
6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- mfalkenstein
- 2020-01-14
Fantastic
A great mix of humour and personality and new lands. I’m hooked for another book.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Justin
- 2019-09-24
Way more then I expected
I recommend this to anyone who likes to play the healer in RPGS but also to those who enjoy a solid adventure story based around game like mechanics
2 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Zef
- 2019-08-04
DnD Retelling
This read more like a DnD dungeon masters account of their latest adventure. I wasn't a fan.. Didn't draw me in.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jordan
- 2019-04-02
Hilarious
The characters in the start are awesome. The author did a great job with the storyline and I can’t wait for the next. Todd Menesses did an outstanding job on the narration.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Andrew H.
- 2020-03-12
Pretty good
Seems weird at first but you quickly get over it. Lots of content, great for people that chew through books and want something casual. 👍🏻
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2020-03-09
Excellent!
This is the first time I've read a LitRPG book and wasn't drowned in character stat pages every 5 minutes. the story is excellent, the narration is top notch. It was very enjoyable and I found myself excited to continue the story anytime I had to pause it. I'm starting The Second Rea right away!
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- greg pitt
- 2020-03-03
Amazing concept, and Characters !
Such a cool starting place and concept, the characters are hilarious and they way they handle situations involving fanticy elements are so different then we are used to seeing. great work! AND some love for Todd Menesses as he captures the tones, reactions and attitudes throughout perfectly.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2019-06-06
Couldn't bring myself to finish the book
I love xanxia, so I was really excited for this book. I've zoned out of listening to multiple chapters and I still know whats going on because it's so slow and predictable. The author took all the fun exciting tropes of a xanxia and put them in a box as an after thought. Then focused entirely on the most boring parts of the magic system. Characters are bland. Jokes aren't funny. And the narrator is so monotone he obviously didn't like the book either.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2019-05-19
Slow Starter
found the start a bit slow, or at least off topic from what I was expecting. About 1/3rd to half way through I found I could no longer stop listening all the way to the end.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Chad
- 2019-02-13
2 Combat Vets, Kingdom Building, Great Litrpg!
Great Litrpg! It has the kingdom building and ruling aspect of litrpg's that I love, while being mixed in with plenty of action to keep things interesting! Each book features a unique new tiered realm, a great idea allowing the protagonists to get incredibly powerful, until they get to the next realm where everything is a challenge again. It helps keep things fresh with each new realm allowing the writer to go in new directions. Having two "brothers in arms" as the protagonists sets a great tone for the series. The wounded warrior opening had me really identifying with the characters. I also loved how the blacksmith and alchemy professions were a main focus of character leveling. RPG professions and min/maxing have always brought out my inner geek, and it was done very well. What makes this new book great isn't anything super unique, but Michael has taken several different ideas from other authors and refined them into something that works better. I'm hoping more authors will use a similar tiered world system to avoid writing themselves into a corner. I enjoyed the narration from Todd Menesses enough to browse through other books he's done, I hope he gets the other books narrated soon! Check out the new book on Patreon if you are as impatient as me!
18 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- surfgoat
- 2019-03-02
Awkward and repetitive
I've read and listened to a lot of books similar to The Two Week Curse and this is one that I would not recommend you spend money on. First, the language is awkward and unintelligent. I don't have a problem with foul language especially from a group of combat veterans as it lends realism. I do have a serious problem though when the author uses such language in his narration rather than in his character's speech. That shows such an incredible lack creativity that I very nearly stopped listening to the story each time it happened. Characters can swear but the moment the author does it to lend force to the story is the moment the author loses all respect. Seriously, as an author, if you can't find a creative way to add force to your story other than dropping an F-bomb you probably shouldn't be writing. Second, if you removed each time the character sheet or pop-up notification was read or repeated you could remove several hours of audio. It's almost like listening to someone read a game manual at times and so a lot less happens in the 19 hours of audio than you would expect. Finally, on several occasions I restarted a chapter thinking that I must have missed something. I hadn't. There are just enormous holes in the story that either the author assumes you will figure out for yourself or doesn't feel are important enough to provide to the reader. This combined with only cursory descriptions of characters, beasts, and locations paints a picture that is more 5-year-old scribble than work of art. All things considered, this is a poor work of fiction. It is entirely unremarkable and will not be continuing the series.
33 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jason P Lebeau
- 2019-02-19
Better than Expected
I love the LitPRG genera, but it's become absolutely saturated in the last year with sub-par, self-published books with the same rehashed plots and mechanics. For that reason I didn't go into this book with high expectations, I expected it to just be a generic time filler, but while the book was not perfect, it was refreshingly different and very enjoyable. PLOT: The book is about 1/3 adventuring and 2/3 base building. Honestly I didn't expect any base building, so I was surprised by this. I personally like that style of LitPRG, but others might not. Some sections of this become a bit dull as I think too much time was spent on the mundane aspects of city management, but most of it is good. There are plenty of scenes outside of this base building, but they are all focused at the beginning and end of the book. There are some interesting sub plots from the first part of the book that do get followed up on in the end, which is nice because in a lot of LitRPG those things sort of get forgotten, The Land series is a prime example of that. I don't want to give up too much about the plot, because it's hard not to spoil it, but I will say the story does not proceed in the way I was expecting. I should mention pacing and chronological order is a problem for me with this book. Sometimes it feels like a month of activity will go by, taking up a dozen chapters, only to be told later the amount of time passed was 5 days. Things seem to be completed in unrealistically fast time. This would be OK if there was some reasoning behind it, but we are lead to assume time flows normally. Some mentions are made later about the amount of time it takes to, for example, build a building, but it feels like too little too late and it still does not explain how you can do things like turn farmers into grizzled veterans in a matter of days. The worst part for me though is feeling like the timeline got messed up.... almost like entire pages were misplaced. Sometimes it feels like they are talking about something they are planning to do in the future as if it already happened, or that they are discovering things they should have already known about. Sometimes it feels like things happen more than once. I actually wonder if the Audible app messed up the chapters or something, I will have to re-read it to be sure. CHARACTERS: There are two main characters, which is a bit different for the genera, as most LitRPGs focus on a single player. They are a bit different than your typical MC as they come in with a military background. The other characters are mostly decent, with a couple that stand out. Character development is not the best in this book, but it's pretty good for the genera. WORLD AND GAME MECHANICS: Lots of new concepts and ideas in this book, most of them pretty cool. Unfortunately some of them don't feel consistent or feel completely thought out. Some of the mechanics are explained over and over to the point of being annoying while others are barely touched on. Most of the mechanics and systems are really interesting though, it's just some of them feel awkward or unfinished. Most of it is not major to the story, just slightly annoying. Some examples are being given a list of resources in the city management screen, but resources are never talked about in the story, there really is no resource management, it just feels like there are infinite resources. Another is how skill books are consumed when they are used, yet they want to build a library where people can go and read them, making it seem like they have infinite uses. Just lots of little strange things like that. WRITING QUALITY: It falls somewhere in between self-published and a traditional published book. There are mistakes and awkwardness, It's not so much there are glaring errors, it's more that there are a lot of odd wording choices, and scenes and dialog that could have been executed better. There are times where the writer goes on odd tangents or randomly returns to the same topic discussed a few paragraphs earlier, like when someone is telling a story and remembers an earlier part of the story, so they mention it before continuing with their original train of thought. Again nothing terrible, but it just felt like it could have used some more time in editing. This is pretty common in this genera, especially since many of the books coming out are self published or translated. NARRATION: Pretty good, but I took a star off for the bad Chinese accents. Many of the residents of this world are apparently Chinese, but the narrator uses the same cheesy accent for all of them, making it hard to differentiate. The accent he uses sounds more like the type of fake accent someone would use to make fun of a Chinese person. His other accents are fine, he has a decent southern sounding one, and he is not a bad narrator, I just don't think this narrator was well suited to a book with so many Chinese characters.
122 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Luke
- 2019-02-11
Was it really that good?
Short answer.. I couldnt put it down. I listen to it in two days.... Now I'm waiting for second book to come out. I been listening to a lot of litrpg books and this book was refreshing. Micheal Chatfield did a great job with character development. Making you feel like you are there. While one the edge of your seat. I always put a 30 min time on when I listen to book in case I get board or fall asleep. But this been had me up for 3 hours resting the time until I had to force my self to go To bed. First time hearing Todd Menesses performance. He bring all the characters to file and I will be looking into other books he has been apart in. You made a good pick.
7 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Rockriver
- 2019-04-04
Good story, writing needs work.
The narration is good but could use a little more bite during combat. The story is also good but needs work. There are times when it focuses too much on little things then skips ahead days just to progress. The main nitpick I have is how much repetition the author uses. Every other chapter is filled with repeated words. An example would be a paragraph that has the word body in it four times, twice in the same sentence. The very next chapter has the word city in it four times. It makes me cringe and you can hear that the narrator doesn't like it either. It's a shame because the story is really good and I like the main characters. But, it hurts my soul to hear the same word used over and over.
22 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- AY4
- 2019-03-13
Where's the rest of the series?!?!?!
FINALLY!!! An author that actually sounds like he knows what it's like to have been in the $*** and low crawled out of it, or at least knows some who have. I have never laughed as hard listening to a book as I did for the first 20 minutes of this one, the conversations and actions are exactly like some of the things my old squad mates and I used to do and say to each other all the time back in my time in service. The story line is awesome and while it moves pretty fast at times the narrator doesn't try to rapid fire the words out just to make up for a lack of skill to voice the urgency. These two make an awesome tandem in a wonderful story line. Now Amazon just needs to saddle up and get the next two books in this series on audible so we can enjoy the others.
71 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Lambo
- 2019-08-05
Good but needs a proofreader.
The first part of the prologue is very military. It's gritty and nasty but gives you some background on the characters. The second part of the prologue is a more standard prologue and is important to the story. If you don't like hard core military stuff, skip forward a few chapters until nobody's shooting and you'll get to the second part of the prologue. The main story I really enjoyed. It has a very different feel to it than virtually all of the novels I've read as the main characters are hard core military, in a fantasy world with stat screens. It's got the "video game feel" that characterizes the litrpg genre. I love the fact that the characters are left with freedom to do what they want. There are plenty of "quests", but they mostly happen because the main characters got involved in something, not because the game world decided to give them one. There's also a great deal of flexibility and realism in the skills and abilities they can acquire; they can even create some. I really enjoyed the first two audiobooks, but I wondered why it sounded garbled occasionally. Normally I'd put this down to a problem with the reader. However, I couldn't put the series down, so I picked up #3 and #4 in ebook format. That's where the "garbling" came into the light. Michael needs a proofreader to go through and fix the handful of mistakes that exist in EVERY chapter. Partial words, wrong words, weird words("between the circle"-should be within/inside/in),doubled words(ie: 2 different options in a sentence and they're both there), heck even changing monetary system mid-page(one instance that I think was in book 3, they said that they'd spent X gold to buy something, then they sold it for Y silver, and therefore profited Z silver...it's 1,000 silver to the gold, so at even 1 gold starting price they'd have taken a loss). Overall, I really enjoyed the first four of the likely 10 or 11 novels, and found the audio version easier to enjoy as the words roll by and then keep going. So when there's a small mistake, you may or may not hear it, but then it's gone; you don't get to look back and confirm that it was a mistake.
5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- charles
- 2019-01-17
Perfection
First off, how have I never heard of todd menesses before. His narration was absolutely fantastic. The start was a little slow but after that it took off like a rocket. Absolutely amazing storyline wile avoiding most of the clichés. Would definitely recommend. Note: I paid for this book with my own damn money, and this is a REAL honest review.
61 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- David Rey
- 2020-02-23
goofy, but not in a bad way?
I struggled with how I wanted this to be more imaginative at times. I wanted more unusual enemies and challenges. Very interesting character mechanics. Would only recommend to fans of the genre
4 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Robert
- 2020-02-11
Seems abridged Lacks depth Wait for rewrite
Another take on the common RPG literature. Character development seems sudden. It's more like the characters take sharp turns rather than slow growth into someone new. (oh I'm this new emotion now for no apparent reason without any plot development to show they've been moving in that direction, if the main character had been a serial killer, mid stabbing somebody they might go oh you know what doing this is bad let me heal you.) Main characters suddenly have well-thought-out plans and ideas without Rhyme or Reason as if they've been thinking on it for weeks when taken by the arc of the story they've only been in the situation for a relatively short period of time. (oh I've been in the situation for 5 minutes now, without discussion or reference to having had discussion let me and my supporting main character suddenly agree on everything to the extent as they might as well be one person even going so far as to answer in detail questions asked of the other; Let just go ahead and lay out this 40 step program they are putting together on the fly.) Just wait until the NPCs/background characters start conveniently answering the main characters questions in the immediately preceding scene by following scene the main character just happening to walk up on npc at the beginging of the conversation so as to hear all the relevant information. There are many other issues that causes it to have an abridged feel but I think I have referenced enough situations without providing actual book spoilers. Edit: Just coming back from having finish the second book. Some of the previously mentioned issues the author has with writing are mitigated not really fixed in the second book. Overall there is never really a sense of urgency or suspense and the entire storyline is missing any sort of fog of War. These books really should not have gotten past the editor let alone published at this stage. The closest analog I can give you to the feel and pace that this story arch gives is something like World of Warcraft where you're just grinding it out and you will never reach level cap or endgame. It has potential, real potential, but save your money until it gets a rewrite when the author has had more extensive experience.
4 people found this helpful