REVIEW: 1% Lifesteal (#1)
As readers, sometimes we pick out a read ‘cause we read about it in a list, or see a TikTok or someone recommending it, or, God forbid, we actually have friends that tell us new books.
Or we pick up a book ‘just because it looks that cool.
A few months ago, I was still taking a break from Red Rising, before continuing with Iron Gold, and I wanted to read something more “traditional” to my genre. I’m a LitRPG author primarily, so I should actually read LitRPG; insane revelation, right?
That’s how I found 1% Lifesteal, in my KU recommendations. The concept of the protagonist’s ability sounded interesting at a glance. Stealing just one percent of health as a power sounded so terrible and insignificant that I knew the author had meant for it to sound like it was on purpose, to hook people. After all, I did the same thing with COUNTER, with a premise that promises a protagonist who’s only ability is a counterattack.
Clearly, it worked!
TRASH TIER ORIGINS
Diving in, I was so hooked by just how horrible the protagonist’s life was. I read something years ago as a meme about how every LitRPG or progression fantasy has to start off with the protagonist living in a desolate hole in the middle of nowhere, but this almost felt literal. He lives in a cramped studio apartment with communal showers with the other people on the floor and works a dead-end job, and on top of that, it’s still a Fantasy setting through and through. Drakes pull carriages, buildings float in different hierarchal levels of districts, and the entire world revolves around Archhumans, people with unique abilities.
Freddy, the protagonist, starts off finding the ability to farm really well. Amazing. Even better that the creature that gives him his power is so loud and obnoxious, his first move is to immediately get it sold and exchanged for a 1% Lifesteal ability. Even better, the salesman ends up lowkey scamming him and selling his ability for millions to other people.
Meanwhile, Freddy’s stuck with what sounds like even worse trash. His power is revealed to him and to us, the audience, as a phrase: “hundred-part harm ye bring unto thine enemy, one part ye shall recover”.
Early on, 1% Lifesteal surprises with just how much agency the protagonist starts off with, and how we’re both in the boat of discovering what that means. No one made Freddy go and sell his initial ability. No one made him spend a weak just lying around and enjoying the money he made. No one makes him throw up a middle finger to his boss as soon as he realizes his new status as an Archhuman, but it’s all so personal and realistic, and I love how even he doesn’t fully understand what that power description means, allowing us to tagalong to discover the magic system.
TOUCHING GRASS (LITERALLY)
After all, what counts as “harm”? What counts as something he can heal? What counts as an enemy?
Yes.
At a certain point of the story, Freddy cuts grass to heal his acne. He’s “harming” the grass, and “healing” everything wrong with his body, even issues he didn’t know he had. Later, he “trains” by punching a tree and healing his broken hand by simply cutting more grass.
Now that I type that out, it sounds like the author has a pet peeve for lawnmowers…
Anyway. Mysterious people are after his actually strong ability, and Freddy ends up being taken to a new place somewhere safe to train under a powerful lady’s protection. Specific plot details escape me, but from that point on, the focus of the book remains on him getting stronger. He trains, he eats food and stabs magic organs to heal his broken muscles through Lifesteal, stretches the definitions of what it can do, and so on.
For some of you, if this sounds perfect, I highly recommend!
THE 70% WALL
But it wasn’t for me.
I liked that it had the same emphasis on growth as the Cradle series, and I love that aspect of exploiting a literally described power to it’s most vague interpretations, but it felt like it lost that beginning sense of agency. At a certain point, more things happen around or to Freddy than him actually setting the plot in motion, and I wasn’t a fan of how the plot itself wasn’t really that deep. At some point, Freddy gets captured and thrown into mines as a slave, tortured horribly beyond belief for his powers, but…somehow it still felt boring?
I got 70% of the way through the book before I realized that, yet again, I was reading to finish the book more than reading because I actually enjoyed it. It was the same as what happened with Azarinth Healer’s first book. I got the point of eyeing other reads, like The Sword of Kaigen or continuing with Red Rising.
So I stopped!
I can’t tell you how it ends, or that the second book in the series gets better, or anything past that, because I don’t even know, myself. I dropped 1% Lifesteal and moved on, because there’s only so much time in the world, and we should instead focus on reading what we enjoy.
Looking back, I still don’t regret that I did, because I really enjoyed the book that came next: The Sword of Kaigen.
But that’s for next time’s review!