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The Realm Between #1-3
The Realm Between: Books 1 - 3
Epic fantasy meets video games in this long-running LitRPG series reminiscent of a crazy homebrew campaign.
Like MMORPGs and fantasy-based video games? You'll probably love it.
Like isekai anime or manga? You'll probably love it.
Like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder? You'll probably love it.
Like The Lord of the Rings and/or A Song of Ice and Fire? You get the point.
What you won't get:
OP main characters. Azure = level 1 noob.
Rainbows and butterflies. Actions in these books have real-life consequences for the characters, and your favorite person may die. You have been warned.
The individual books in this series have been in the top 100 of many categories on Amazon, and book 1 was curated by the great Zon for a special promo, which means that it probably doesn't suck! And now for the actual blurb...
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…
Like MMORPGs and fantasy-based video games? You'll probably love it.
Like isekai anime or manga? You'll probably love it.
Like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder? You'll probably love it.
Like The Lord of the Rings and/or A Song of Ice and Fire? You get the point.
What you won't get:
OP main characters. Azure = level 1 noob.
Rainbows and butterflies. Actions in these books have real-life consequences for the characters, and your favorite person may die. You have been warned.
The individual books in this series have been in the top 100 of many categories on Amazon, and book 1 was curated by the great Zon for a special promo, which means that it probably doesn't suck! And now for the actual blurb...
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…
791 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 3, 2020
181 people are currently reading
25 people want to read
About the author
Phoenix Grey
18 books103 followersPhoenix Grey is the super secret nerd pen name of a USA Today bestselling author. She currently lives in a secluded podunk town outside of San Antonio, Texas where she can hermit away while working on books and playing video games. When she's not busy plotting her world domination, she can be found hosting game nights at the local comic book store or checking out the latest recommended anime.
She loves hearing from and interacting with fans, so feel free to stalk her in the following ways:
1. Phoenix Grey's Mailing List: http://www.subscribepage.com/TheRealm...
Sign up to learn when the next installment of The Realm Between is coming out.
2. The Realm Between's Facebook page: fb.me/TheRealmBetweenLitRPG
3. Phoenix Grey's Reader Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Phoen...
4. Phoenix Grey's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjxd...
She loves hearing from and interacting with fans, so feel free to stalk her in the following ways:
1. Phoenix Grey's Mailing List: http://www.subscribepage.com/TheRealm...
Sign up to learn when the next installment of The Realm Between is coming out.
2. The Realm Between's Facebook page: fb.me/TheRealmBetweenLitRPG
3. Phoenix Grey's Reader Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Phoen...
4. Phoenix Grey's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjxd...
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 17, 2021
3 1/2 stars
This boxset contains the first three books in the series, The Curse; Two Brothers; and The Adventurers Guild. The main character is Will Galvan, who had a degree in video game graphic design and had hoped to find a job within the industry straight from leaving college, but soon had to realise that with no real experience, he wasn’t going to have much luck getting a job for any of the big video gaming companies. He tried for some three years, having to give up and find a boring job to pay his way, even ending up as a tech and answering service calls in people’s homes. Not very exciting and he relieved the boredom somewhat by playing in the fantasy game worlds at night. They were the sort of work he really wanted to do. He was still signed up to receive job notifications for any new openings and suddenly got an email from Radical Interactive about a position for a beta tester. They aren’t a gaming company, mainly dealing in the education and medical sectors, but they had advanced VR systems for teaching hands-on applications. If he could get his foot in here, he would have a real chance of making his name as a graphic designer. One game they had put out in the VRMMORPG world was The Realm and he lies to the HR manager about ever playing it, as it had been a bit of a lame duck and soon forgotten about! He was excited that they might be revamping the game with some new graphics and design, but instead they are using it to see if it could help patients with brain issues to repair damaged parts of their brains.
Maybe he should have concentrated a bit more on the small print of the contract he signed for the new job, as he has no idea that he was literally signing his life away! After some six months of the same boring VR program training he had to work through, he went home after his girlfriend called to break up with him. He ended up helping a neighbour, but falling off a stepladder and falling into a coma after a severe head injury. His parents are upset by the fact that he apparently signed over his unconscious body to Radical Interactive until the time he woke up, if he ever did! He was now their property. He is now a guinea pig for their new software that Radical Interactive say might be able to fix whatever was broken in his brain. His mind will now be in a special world and he will need to take actions inside that world to stimulate parts of his brain. There are supposed to be guides within the program and others connected to the game around the world to help him and others. The game is The Realm!
When Will wakes up he is unable to remember anything from before that and even his surroundings are strange and not what he expected. When a man enters the barn he was sleeping in, he tells him he is on Crescent Island, part of The Realm. He asks Will to do a stat check on himself and to check if his health and stamina are back up to 100%. When he finally does, he finds he is on level 1 and some basic numbers for most listings, but with no known name, just like a video game! When the man, Manny, asks his name, he has to think of a player name and ends up calling himself Azure. He is given a job to help out on the farm, to pay off his debt from being put up in the man’s barn one presumes, with the man’s son Uden Namud, a half-human half-imp, and the task appears in his vision, as if he had a VR headset on, but he knows he hasn’t as he already tried to remove it! He can’t tell whether the people he interacts with are real characters or NPC’s in the game, but everything is exceedingly realistic. He is given basic training with a weapon by Uden, then a quest comes up and he has to agree to do it or not. His first one is to defeat the dark sprites, by killing five of them, but if he fails the condition is to die! There is a plague on the land of Crescent Island and it seems a dark magic curse has been placed upon it and it will be Will’s quest to try and find out why the darkness has spread across the island and how it might be stopped, along with Uden and his brother Lonnell. The trio will have to complete a number of quests and face a multitude of different creatures in their journey. The path is perilous and Will’s real body reacts to all that goes on in the game, even flatlining at one point.
They will have to face a demon in his lair and Uden gives Will pause for thought, as to whether he is league with their enemy or truly working with them. One of the trio is killed off in a final stand against a foe, leaving them with a dead hero and neither of the two remaining really sure what to do next. Will has been envious of the magic that some can do and takes up the mantle of his dead companion and wants to cross over to the mainland to study magic in the school there. They are sidetracked with a quest to find one of the brother’s love Brenna, who was sent away to the mainland for safety by her father, whilst the curse was still causing danger on Crescent Island. The duo will have to travel across the sea, avoiding the dangerous and tempting sirens, that Will being Will, he would love to actually see, no matter how dangerous he is told they are! Once they reach the mainland, they will need to earn some money, Will for his magic schooling, and to pay their way whilst they look for Brenna. Will ends up almost penniless after being robbed by a knight and they are introduced to the Adventurers Guild, where they can take up quests to earn them some coin, with the quests having different levels of danger attached, as well as pay obviously. Those that are ranked Hard or Very Hard, he soon learns come with the very real danger of actual death and are best avoided until he has grown his skill levels considerably. Back on Crescent Island he only had to do simple jobs on the farm to earn his bed and board and he soon finds out that the mainland is a lot more expensive place to live and work. Adding in the costs of his magic schooling and lessons, as well as the expenses for the bounty quests he undertakes and it soon adds up.
There are a lot more books to go in this series and all of the adventures and quests can soon run into one another, apart from the fact he usually ends up fighting off different creatures and monsters along the way. The storyline is very reminiscent of the Beta Tester LitRPG series by Rachel Ford, where her beta tester got stuck in the game he was testing and was unable to disconnect his brain from the VR set at the end of his day’s work. The character then had to try and finish the game, completing all the main and side quests, to get the game to let him out, but software faults and glitches kept him stuck. The company he worked for knew this had happened before but hushed it all up. I wonder how far Will will get before he realises he could really die in this game, in one of his many adventures or quests and that this is no longer a game he is playing, but that he is really playing for his own life! There are definitely some interesting scenarios as the characters work their way through the story, but this is probably more for the die-hard gaming fan, who loves to see the characters levels going up and them struggling with their health levels as they get injured by strange creatures they have to face off against frequently. A dead character comes back to life in the storyline, possibly to add a bit more flavour and mystery to the tale. No doubt Will and the two brothers will continue their quests for many more books to come, before the series comes to a conclusion. I received an ARC copy of the boxset from BookSprout and I have freely given my own opinion of the books above.
This boxset contains the first three books in the series, The Curse; Two Brothers; and The Adventurers Guild. The main character is Will Galvan, who had a degree in video game graphic design and had hoped to find a job within the industry straight from leaving college, but soon had to realise that with no real experience, he wasn’t going to have much luck getting a job for any of the big video gaming companies. He tried for some three years, having to give up and find a boring job to pay his way, even ending up as a tech and answering service calls in people’s homes. Not very exciting and he relieved the boredom somewhat by playing in the fantasy game worlds at night. They were the sort of work he really wanted to do. He was still signed up to receive job notifications for any new openings and suddenly got an email from Radical Interactive about a position for a beta tester. They aren’t a gaming company, mainly dealing in the education and medical sectors, but they had advanced VR systems for teaching hands-on applications. If he could get his foot in here, he would have a real chance of making his name as a graphic designer. One game they had put out in the VRMMORPG world was The Realm and he lies to the HR manager about ever playing it, as it had been a bit of a lame duck and soon forgotten about! He was excited that they might be revamping the game with some new graphics and design, but instead they are using it to see if it could help patients with brain issues to repair damaged parts of their brains.
Maybe he should have concentrated a bit more on the small print of the contract he signed for the new job, as he has no idea that he was literally signing his life away! After some six months of the same boring VR program training he had to work through, he went home after his girlfriend called to break up with him. He ended up helping a neighbour, but falling off a stepladder and falling into a coma after a severe head injury. His parents are upset by the fact that he apparently signed over his unconscious body to Radical Interactive until the time he woke up, if he ever did! He was now their property. He is now a guinea pig for their new software that Radical Interactive say might be able to fix whatever was broken in his brain. His mind will now be in a special world and he will need to take actions inside that world to stimulate parts of his brain. There are supposed to be guides within the program and others connected to the game around the world to help him and others. The game is The Realm!
When Will wakes up he is unable to remember anything from before that and even his surroundings are strange and not what he expected. When a man enters the barn he was sleeping in, he tells him he is on Crescent Island, part of The Realm. He asks Will to do a stat check on himself and to check if his health and stamina are back up to 100%. When he finally does, he finds he is on level 1 and some basic numbers for most listings, but with no known name, just like a video game! When the man, Manny, asks his name, he has to think of a player name and ends up calling himself Azure. He is given a job to help out on the farm, to pay off his debt from being put up in the man’s barn one presumes, with the man’s son Uden Namud, a half-human half-imp, and the task appears in his vision, as if he had a VR headset on, but he knows he hasn’t as he already tried to remove it! He can’t tell whether the people he interacts with are real characters or NPC’s in the game, but everything is exceedingly realistic. He is given basic training with a weapon by Uden, then a quest comes up and he has to agree to do it or not. His first one is to defeat the dark sprites, by killing five of them, but if he fails the condition is to die! There is a plague on the land of Crescent Island and it seems a dark magic curse has been placed upon it and it will be Will’s quest to try and find out why the darkness has spread across the island and how it might be stopped, along with Uden and his brother Lonnell. The trio will have to complete a number of quests and face a multitude of different creatures in their journey. The path is perilous and Will’s real body reacts to all that goes on in the game, even flatlining at one point.
They will have to face a demon in his lair and Uden gives Will pause for thought, as to whether he is league with their enemy or truly working with them. One of the trio is killed off in a final stand against a foe, leaving them with a dead hero and neither of the two remaining really sure what to do next. Will has been envious of the magic that some can do and takes up the mantle of his dead companion and wants to cross over to the mainland to study magic in the school there. They are sidetracked with a quest to find one of the brother’s love Brenna, who was sent away to the mainland for safety by her father, whilst the curse was still causing danger on Crescent Island. The duo will have to travel across the sea, avoiding the dangerous and tempting sirens, that Will being Will, he would love to actually see, no matter how dangerous he is told they are! Once they reach the mainland, they will need to earn some money, Will for his magic schooling, and to pay their way whilst they look for Brenna. Will ends up almost penniless after being robbed by a knight and they are introduced to the Adventurers Guild, where they can take up quests to earn them some coin, with the quests having different levels of danger attached, as well as pay obviously. Those that are ranked Hard or Very Hard, he soon learns come with the very real danger of actual death and are best avoided until he has grown his skill levels considerably. Back on Crescent Island he only had to do simple jobs on the farm to earn his bed and board and he soon finds out that the mainland is a lot more expensive place to live and work. Adding in the costs of his magic schooling and lessons, as well as the expenses for the bounty quests he undertakes and it soon adds up.
There are a lot more books to go in this series and all of the adventures and quests can soon run into one another, apart from the fact he usually ends up fighting off different creatures and monsters along the way. The storyline is very reminiscent of the Beta Tester LitRPG series by Rachel Ford, where her beta tester got stuck in the game he was testing and was unable to disconnect his brain from the VR set at the end of his day’s work. The character then had to try and finish the game, completing all the main and side quests, to get the game to let him out, but software faults and glitches kept him stuck. The company he worked for knew this had happened before but hushed it all up. I wonder how far Will will get before he realises he could really die in this game, in one of his many adventures or quests and that this is no longer a game he is playing, but that he is really playing for his own life! There are definitely some interesting scenarios as the characters work their way through the story, but this is probably more for the die-hard gaming fan, who loves to see the characters levels going up and them struggling with their health levels as they get injured by strange creatures they have to face off against frequently. A dead character comes back to life in the storyline, possibly to add a bit more flavour and mystery to the tale. No doubt Will and the two brothers will continue their quests for many more books to come, before the series comes to a conclusion. I received an ARC copy of the boxset from BookSprout and I have freely given my own opinion of the books above.
December 14, 2020
I am really enjoying this series.
This is a fun series. I am really enjoying it so far. I like the way the universe is expanding through the books, and am happy to see the surprise meet up at the end of book three. That hopefully bodes well for all sorts of interaction in book 4, etc. The only problem with this 3 book compendium is that I did not get much done other than reading it for the last day or so. :) So only start this series if you want to be sucked into an interesting story with fun characters. I recommend it.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
This is a fun series. I am really enjoying it so far. I like the way the universe is expanding through the books, and am happy to see the surprise meet up at the end of book three. That hopefully bodes well for all sorts of interaction in book 4, etc. The only problem with this 3 book compendium is that I did not get much done other than reading it for the last day or so. :) So only start this series if you want to be sucked into an interesting story with fun characters. I recommend it.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
December 20, 2020
The author created an interesting world where fantasy meets real life as Azure/Will gets stuck in the gaming world. Although this is not my usual genre to read I'm glad I decided to give it a try because the story was interesting and it had me turning the pages to find out what would happen next for Azure. I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book.
December 22, 2020
An interesting read
I've reach other RPG or game lit before and have enjoyed these reads. This one is no different. Will is an interesting character. The story is good overall, or does low down a little here and there. I want to see if Will and the people he meets in the Realm meet their goals or something goes awry/ changes dramatically.
I've reach other RPG or game lit before and have enjoyed these reads. This one is no different. Will is an interesting character. The story is good overall, or does low down a little here and there. I want to see if Will and the people he meets in the Realm meet their goals or something goes awry/ changes dramatically.
April 26, 2022
I was intrigued in wondering what The Realm Between was going to be like as I do like Phoenix Grey's other Pen named works.
But here I wasn't expecting to be in a 'gaming world' scenario.
I'm really sorry to say its not my cuppa tea.
Though the narration made me read/ listen to the first book, otherwise I would've stopped after ch.4
But here I wasn't expecting to be in a 'gaming world' scenario.
I'm really sorry to say its not my cuppa tea.
Though the narration made me read/ listen to the first book, otherwise I would've stopped after ch.4
June 18, 2024
Pretty solid litrpg and a great value. Like some others have mentioned the author made some really brave choices with regard to one of the more interesting characters and the MC can be a bit of an immature pain at times but who can't be at that age. 5 stars for originality but overall just barely fell short of 5 stars.
December 29, 2021
Nothing comes easy
I like my books with a little reality... These three kept me reading. Will is a good main character. Not a lot of repeating information, which makes me happy dance..
I like my books with a little reality... These three kept me reading. Will is a good main character. Not a lot of repeating information, which makes me happy dance..
March 28, 2022
A Really Fun Read!
I had a lot of fun reading this book. I was looking for something fantasy based, but a little like Ready Player One. I think this book hit all the right buttons for me.
I had a lot of fun reading this book. I was looking for something fantasy based, but a little like Ready Player One. I think this book hit all the right buttons for me.
October 23, 2022
Great Book!
This book was outstanding! I could not put it down, the author creates a great plot and I look forward to picking up the next book!
This book was outstanding! I could not put it down, the author creates a great plot and I look forward to picking up the next book!
February 1, 2023
Unlikeable characters in an unlikeable gameworld. The main character is a whiny, self-centered, entitled, spoiled brat who claims to be a gamer, but lacks any serious skills. The game world he is thrust upon seems to have no rhyme or reason. There is nothing original or interesting to be found here.
January 25, 2025
I read the first book several years ago but dnf. I made it all the way through the first book but not sure I want to read the second - kid fell died/coma then into game
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews