Quick Take
- Narration: Erebus Esprit delivers a performance with appropriate darkness and energy for the genre, though the writing’s structural problems limit what narration can accomplish.
- Themes: power earned through moral compromise, underworld entanglement as origin story, the gap between who you were and who you become
- Mood: Dark and kinetic, with an indie superhero fiction sensibility
- Verdict: An interesting premise with real engagement problems, the abrupt ending and uneven prose will frustrate listeners who need a complete arc, but superhero LitRPG readers comfortable with serial fiction will find enough here to continue.
The premise of Revenant arrived in my feed on a Thursday afternoon when I was looking for something propulsive and genre-comfortable, something that would move fast and not demand too much in the way of literary patience. The pitch worked on paper: a man who has spent years trapped in debt to a criminal organization finally manifests a superpower, specifically the ability to steal abilities from corpses he touches, and decides to use it to escape both his debt and his past. That is a workable dark-superhero-fiction setup, and the Revenant series clearly has an audience.
Siborg is a writer working in the indie LitRPG and web-serial superhero space, and Revenant carries the hallmarks of that tradition: fast-moving plot, a protagonist whose moral compromises are part of the attraction rather than a flaw to be explained away, and a power system that generates interesting tactical problems. The first 60-percent of this nine-hour audiobook delivers on those promises with enough momentum to sustain engagement.
Our Take on Revenant: Power Stealing Superhero
The setup Siborg establishes for Michael is genuinely interesting because his backstory inverts the standard superhero origin. He doesn’t acquire powers and then choose heroism, he acquires powers after years of being forced to serve criminal interests, and the book is about whether and how he can use a dark ability (stolen from dead bodies) toward something he can believe in. That moral texture is the book’s real selling point, and the chapters that engage with it directly, Michael’s internal negotiation between the underworld obligations that could get him killed and the heroic identity he’s constructing, have real energy.
Erebus Esprit’s narration suits the material’s register. He brings the right degree of world-weariness to Michael’s first-person perspective and handles the action sequences with appropriate momentum. The production is clean. The casting works.
Why Listen to Revenant: Power Stealing Superhero
For listeners who enjoy dark superhero fiction in the indie serialized tradition, web serial-to-audio, LitRPG-adjacent superhero content, the kind of story that prioritizes power-system logic and moral ambiguity over polished literary prose, Revenant delivers the things that audience is looking for. The power mechanic is novel enough to generate genuine tactical interest: each ability Michael acquires comes from a specific kind of person, and Siborg plays with the implications of that in ways that keep the acquisition sequences from feeling routine.
The criminal underworld setting also provides a more interesting backdrop than the usual superhero-in-a-city setup. Michael isn’t navigating a world of established heroes and villains with clear hierarchies, he’s embedded in an organization that uses ordinary violence and ordinary leverage, and his emergence as someone with extraordinary capabilities within that ordinary criminal world creates friction that the book uses well in its better passages.
What to Watch For in Revenant: Power Stealing Superhero
The problems are real and worth naming. One reviewer puts it plainly: the book stops rather than ends. Not in a to-be-continued way, where a major arc completes and the series continues, but mid-event, mid-scene, in a way that reads as production choice rather than narrative decision. For listeners who need the emotional satisfaction of a completed arc, that abrupt stop will be deeply frustrating and may retroactively damage the hours of engagement that preceded it.
The prose-level issues are also documented by multiple reviewers. The writing has not been through a thorough editorial process, sentences occasionally assign actions to the wrong character, character behaviors are sometimes described with grammatical confusion, and the voice is uneven in ways that a developmental editor would have caught. The story is interesting enough that these issues don’t kill the reading, but they accumulate, and listeners with low tolerance for rough prose should know what they’re getting into.
Who Should Listen to Revenant: Power Stealing Superhero
The audience for this is specific: fans of indie superhero fiction who are comfortable with serial structure and can accept an incomplete arc in the first volume. If you’ve listened to other web-serial-to-audio superhero titles and have a tolerance for rough craft in service of a compelling power system and morally complex protagonist, Revenant has enough to offer. Listeners who need polished prose, a completed story arc, or who come to this from literary fiction rather than the LitRPG/superhero fiction space should probably look elsewhere. The 4.3 average rating with 37 reviews reflects a real audience, just not a broad one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Revenant: Power Stealing Superhero have a complete story arc in this first volume, or does it end on a cliffhanger?
Multiple reviewers indicate the book stops abruptly, not at a natural cliffhanger but mid-event, without a narrative conclusion. This is a meaningful caveat for listeners who require a completed arc before continuing a series.
What exactly is Michael’s power in Revenant, and how is it different from a standard superpower origin?
Michael can steal the superpower of any corpse he touches. The power only activates through contact with dead bodies, and each acquired ability comes from a specific person, which creates an interesting layer of moral implication that the book engages with periodically.
Is the writing quality in Revenant comparable to traditional published fiction?
No. This is indie-published fiction in the web-serial tradition, and multiple reviewers note editing and proofreading issues, grammatical confusion in action sequences, misattributed character actions, and uneven prose. The story is engaging, but the craft issues are real and consistent.
How does Erebus Esprit’s narration handle the dark tone of the material?
Esprit delivers a performance suited to the genre, appropriately world-weary for Michael’s first-person voice, with the right energy for action sequences. The narration is one of the book’s more polished elements.
