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A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers Victor and Eli started out as college roommates--brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to show more the experimental, things go horribly wrong. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find--aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge--but who will be left alive at the end? In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn't automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question. "A dynamic and original twist on what it means to be a hero and a villain. A killer from page one...highly recommended " --Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Marvel Universe vs. The Avengers and Patient Zero One of Publishers Weekly's Best Fantasy Books of 2013 show lessTags
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College, extraordinary powers, and a slew of murders, oh my! Vicious by V.E. Schwab tracks former roommates Victor Vale and Eliott “Eli” Cardale over a period of ten years. When Eli chooses to write his final college thesis on EOs, people with ExtraOrdinary powers, an intrigued Victor finds a way to involve himself in the project too. What happens next changes their lives forever.
The chapters jump back and forth between time periods, so be prepared to dive into the main conflict within the first few pages. Since Schwab leaves out various elements of the plot only to surprise the reader with them later, you will find yourself constantly mulling over who is actually the hero and who the villain. Various chapters are also told from show more different perspectives, so the reader gets an inside look into the minds of all of the main characters.
While the plot mostly revolves around Victor and Eli, the two pick up a variety of extreme personalities along the way. Sydney and Serena, sisters with a dismal past, end up entwined in their shenanigans, along with Mitchell, an ex-con hacker genius with a strong sense of loyalty. Victor and Eli each possess distinctive personalities that contrast each other well. Where Victor is a conflicted and introspective outcast, Eli is outgoing, religious, and adored by all.
The most captivating aspect of the novel is the theme of real vs. perceived heroism. Who decides what makes a hero? Likewise, when does someone become a supervillain? What makes you one or the other? Is there a clear line between the two or is it more complicated than that? And the underlying theme of power adds even more complications to those questions. It’s an endless psychological feedback loop that may or may not drive you insane, but in a good way, I promise.
The one major issue I have with the plot, which somewhat spoiled it for me, is Eli’s development. From the beginning of the novel, his persona is far less nuanced in comparison to Victor’s. Everything seems very black and white to him, and that never really changes. His obsession with God and doing “God’s work” also annoyed me slightly, as he becomes very one-track minded in that regard. Whether or not this was an active choice on behalf of the author, I will not deny it made for a rather stale character by the end of the novel.
Regardless of that one caveat, V.E. Schwab’s Vicious is a fascinating look into a world with an underground superhero network. The novel is incredibly engaging and action-packed from the get-go. If you pick it up, make sure to clear your schedule, as it’s a page-turner you won’t be able to put down lightly. show less
The chapters jump back and forth between time periods, so be prepared to dive into the main conflict within the first few pages. Since Schwab leaves out various elements of the plot only to surprise the reader with them later, you will find yourself constantly mulling over who is actually the hero and who the villain. Various chapters are also told from show more different perspectives, so the reader gets an inside look into the minds of all of the main characters.
While the plot mostly revolves around Victor and Eli, the two pick up a variety of extreme personalities along the way. Sydney and Serena, sisters with a dismal past, end up entwined in their shenanigans, along with Mitchell, an ex-con hacker genius with a strong sense of loyalty. Victor and Eli each possess distinctive personalities that contrast each other well. Where Victor is a conflicted and introspective outcast, Eli is outgoing, religious, and adored by all.
The most captivating aspect of the novel is the theme of real vs. perceived heroism. Who decides what makes a hero? Likewise, when does someone become a supervillain? What makes you one or the other? Is there a clear line between the two or is it more complicated than that? And the underlying theme of power adds even more complications to those questions. It’s an endless psychological feedback loop that may or may not drive you insane, but in a good way, I promise.
The one major issue I have with the plot, which somewhat spoiled it for me, is Eli’s development. From the beginning of the novel, his persona is far less nuanced in comparison to Victor’s. Everything seems very black and white to him, and that never really changes. His obsession with God and doing “God’s work” also annoyed me slightly, as he becomes very one-track minded in that regard. Whether or not this was an active choice on behalf of the author, I will not deny it made for a rather stale character by the end of the novel.
Regardless of that one caveat, V.E. Schwab’s Vicious is a fascinating look into a world with an underground superhero network. The novel is incredibly engaging and action-packed from the get-go. If you pick it up, make sure to clear your schedule, as it’s a page-turner you won’t be able to put down lightly. show less
The opening scene of 'Vicious' is wonderful. Set in a graveyard, it sets the tone for the rest of the book.Here's the first paragraph.
I loved this. The declarative heading that even in the audiobook version, I heard in BOLD BLOCK CAPITALS grabs the attention. The imagery is like reading a powerful graphic novel or watching the brooding black white and red images that made 'Sin City' a cult movie. It's bold and dark but has just a hint of self-knowing humour. I was hooked.
The story that followed was operatic - heavy on drama and pathos - thin on characterisation. I felt that this was mostly a successful style choice, the use of a restricted emotional palette rather than a lack of depth.
The plot is inventive and engaging. The intercut show more timelines were deftly used to conjure a sense of inevitable convergence that added tension and kept me turning the pages.
By the middle of the book, I became restless. The muted emotions made the people feel two-dimensional and hard to care about. I was being pulled along by my curiosity rather than by an engagement with the people or the text.
Still, it was a strong pull. The plot fitted together like the pieces of a Mechano construction kit: logical, careful, almost inevitable. I liked the way the story thought about power and revenge and heroes and villains I liked the stylish clarity of the storytelling. I struggled with the emotional distance of the main characters. I could see that it mirrored what was happening to Eli and Victor but it still made me uncomfortable.
It wasn't until the dramatic, violent crescendo of the story that I realised that I was engaged with two of the characters. Not Victor or Eli or Serena, who remained chillingly inhuman but Mitch who was human and Sydney who had managed to hold on to most of her humanity. It was only then that I saw how precisely Victoria Schwab was managing my emotions without making me aware of it,
I have fun with 'Vicious'. I regret having left it on my shelves untouched for nine years. I'm glad to have gotten to it at last. I see that, sometime in the past nine years, a new audiobook version of 'Vicious' has been released with a different narrator. I think that's a shame I enjoyed Noah Michael Levine's performance. I admired his ability to go from a declarative Joe Friday 'Just the facts' style to nuanced dialogue. show less
I loved this. The declarative heading that even in the audiobook version, I heard in BOLD BLOCK CAPITALS grabs the attention. The imagery is like reading a powerful graphic novel or watching the brooding black white and red images that made 'Sin City' a cult movie. It's bold and dark but has just a hint of self-knowing humour. I was hooked.
The story that followed was operatic - heavy on drama and pathos - thin on characterisation. I felt that this was mostly a successful style choice, the use of a restricted emotional palette rather than a lack of depth.
The plot is inventive and engaging. The intercut show more timelines were deftly used to conjure a sense of inevitable convergence that added tension and kept me turning the pages.
By the middle of the book, I became restless. The muted emotions made the people feel two-dimensional and hard to care about. I was being pulled along by my curiosity rather than by an engagement with the people or the text.
Still, it was a strong pull. The plot fitted together like the pieces of a Mechano construction kit: logical, careful, almost inevitable. I liked the way the story thought about power and revenge and heroes and villains I liked the stylish clarity of the storytelling. I struggled with the emotional distance of the main characters. I could see that it mirrored what was happening to Eli and Victor but it still made me uncomfortable.
It wasn't until the dramatic, violent crescendo of the story that I realised that I was engaged with two of the characters. Not Victor or Eli or Serena, who remained chillingly inhuman but Mitch who was human and Sydney who had managed to hold on to most of her humanity. It was only then that I saw how precisely Victoria Schwab was managing my emotions without making me aware of it,
I have fun with 'Vicious'. I regret having left it on my shelves untouched for nine years. I'm glad to have gotten to it at last. I see that, sometime in the past nine years, a new audiobook version of 'Vicious' has been released with a different narrator. I think that's a shame I enjoyed Noah Michael Levine's performance. I admired his ability to go from a declarative Joe Friday 'Just the facts' style to nuanced dialogue. show less
A fantastic twist on superhero origin stories, exploring what it takes to be a hero or villain and how easily one can convince oneself of either. I loved the nuance of the characters and the unlikely band that forms - each with their own identity and story.
The pseudo-science is handled exceptionally well, making the book feel grounded and just plausible enough to lose yourself in, which is impressive given how familiar the tropes can feel. I also enjoyed the mystery/thriller elements, as the plot gradually unfolds across parallel timelines to reach the present moment. The complementary narratives of both adversaries, and the ways they see themselves, added real depth to the story.
If I could wish for one thing, it would be greater show more diversity among the characters - in terms of sexuality, ethnicity, disability, and other traits. While there is variation in hair colour and style, broader representation could add another layer to the ensemble. I recognise that no single book can be all things, and this may well be addressed elsewhere in the series, but it’s something I’d dearly love to see explored. show less
The pseudo-science is handled exceptionally well, making the book feel grounded and just plausible enough to lose yourself in, which is impressive given how familiar the tropes can feel. I also enjoyed the mystery/thriller elements, as the plot gradually unfolds across parallel timelines to reach the present moment. The complementary narratives of both adversaries, and the ways they see themselves, added real depth to the story.
If I could wish for one thing, it would be greater show more diversity among the characters - in terms of sexuality, ethnicity, disability, and other traits. While there is variation in hair colour and style, broader representation could add another layer to the ensemble. I recognise that no single book can be all things, and this may well be addressed elsewhere in the series, but it’s something I’d dearly love to see explored. show less
Victor is one of those characters that will stay with me forever. I loved how he was truly morally gray. He was a good person but also a terrible person. He was selfish but he was also deeply loyal. Following his journey navigating the past and present and the moments culminating to the moment when Victor and Eli met once again was so stressful but in the best way. The characters were my favorite part about this. Sydney and Mitch need to be protected at all costs and getting to know how they got pulled into Victor's orbit was lovely. I wish we got to see more of Serena's perspective because in my opinion she was the scariest of the characters. The existence of people with extraordinary abilities and how they acquired them was so show more interesting. Ultimately this was a story of revenge and corrupted morals, and I loved every second of it. show less
[Cross-posted to Knite Writes]
Ah, finally! A book that lives up to the hype.
This book was fantastic! It was a very different look at the superhero/power genre than the usual fare, and it went a lot of unconventional directions. What could have been a fairly standard revenge story turned out to be anything but, thanks to some ingenious and strategic use of various superpowers. What could have been a good vs. evil story was completely morally ambiguous — neither Victor nor Eli are good people, and a conspicuous “hero” figure is noticeably absent. What could have been a cliche ending was totally twisted, and thought it wasn’t entirely unexpected (on my part), I found it satisfying all the same.
By far the best thing in this book is show more the characters. There’s a colorful cast, and through short, well-crafted flashbacks, their backstories are explained in ways that perfectly feed into the main plot. There’s a great variety of character mentalities, from the sociopathic Victor to the twelve-year-old Sydney, whose innocence slowly breaks over the course of the book. At times, the characters’ personalities bordered on the over-the-top comic-style superhero types, but they never once crossed that line because the story was so grounded in very real and very gritty relationship dynamics.
The plot wasn’t too shabby either. Not so well put together that I didn’t guess a few twists (like the ending twist) but pretty well done. The structure of the book was fantastic, with the story being told through two intersecting timelines, past and present. It worked very well for this story because it held the tension throughout and kept the pacing relatively quick.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style — there was something about, I think, Schwab’s narratorial voice that threw me off a bit at the beginning. But it stopped bothering me part of the way through, once the plot really kicked.
Overall, a great read! Pretty well-rounded with a couple of weaknesses here and there. But hey, no book is perfect.
I’m really glad this one didn’t fall short of its hype, as I’ve been looking forward to reading it for quite a while now. show less
Ah, finally! A book that lives up to the hype.
This book was fantastic! It was a very different look at the superhero/power genre than the usual fare, and it went a lot of unconventional directions. What could have been a fairly standard revenge story turned out to be anything but, thanks to some ingenious and strategic use of various superpowers. What could have been a good vs. evil story was completely morally ambiguous — neither Victor nor Eli are good people, and a conspicuous “hero” figure is noticeably absent. What could have been a cliche ending was totally twisted, and thought it wasn’t entirely unexpected (on my part), I found it satisfying all the same.
By far the best thing in this book is show more the characters. There’s a colorful cast, and through short, well-crafted flashbacks, their backstories are explained in ways that perfectly feed into the main plot. There’s a great variety of character mentalities, from the sociopathic Victor to the twelve-year-old Sydney, whose innocence slowly breaks over the course of the book. At times, the characters’ personalities bordered on the over-the-top comic-style superhero types, but they never once crossed that line because the story was so grounded in very real and very gritty relationship dynamics.
The plot wasn’t too shabby either. Not so well put together that I didn’t guess a few twists (like the ending twist) but pretty well done. The structure of the book was fantastic, with the story being told through two intersecting timelines, past and present. It worked very well for this story because it held the tension throughout and kept the pacing relatively quick.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style — there was something about, I think, Schwab’s narratorial voice that threw me off a bit at the beginning. But it stopped bothering me part of the way through, once the plot really kicked.
Overall, a great read! Pretty well-rounded with a couple of weaknesses here and there. But hey, no book is perfect.
I’m really glad this one didn’t fall short of its hype, as I’ve been looking forward to reading it for quite a while now. show less
“Victor was naturally quiet, but even more so under pressure, which gave his peers the distinct impression he knew what he was doing, even when he didn’t”
I had no idea what to expect from this book, but somehow I was surprised to find this was pretty gruesome and not a YA fantasy advertised as "morally grey"
I am not a fan of stories with superpowers or lots of magic because if things can be fixed with powers, why should I care? Hence, I was happy to find that this was mainly about the morals of both protagonists. Namely, everyone lacks some morals.
The writing is what made this book great. It’s easily readable and has some ironic witty phrases like the one above, which almost made it funny.
Every chapter reveals a little bit while show more raising even more questions, especially in the first half. Combined with the fact that there are no ‘good’ characters, it made the story suspenseful. I wanted to keep reading to find out what grim things would happen next and why.
The one thing I would have liked to see more of was the mutual obsession between Eli and Victor. The flashbacks detail how they separated, but I wanted to know more about what made Victor think things like this:
”Hate was too simple a word. He and Eli were bonded, by blood and death and science. They were alike, more so now than ever. And he had missed Eli. He wanted to see him. And he wanted to see him suffer. He wanted to see the look in Eli’s eyes when he lit them up with pain. He wanted his attention.” show less
I had no idea what to expect from this book, but somehow I was surprised to find this was pretty gruesome and not a YA fantasy advertised as "morally grey"
I am not a fan of stories with superpowers or lots of magic because if things can be fixed with powers, why should I care? Hence, I was happy to find that this was mainly about the morals of both protagonists. Namely, everyone lacks some morals.
The writing is what made this book great. It’s easily readable and has some ironic witty phrases like the one above, which almost made it funny.
Every chapter reveals a little bit while show more raising even more questions, especially in the first half. Combined with the fact that there are no ‘good’ characters, it made the story suspenseful. I wanted to keep reading to find out what grim things would happen next and why.
The one thing I would have liked to see more of was the mutual obsession between Eli and Victor. The flashbacks detail how they separated, but I wanted to know more about what made Victor think things like this:
”Hate was too simple a word. He and Eli were bonded, by blood and death and science. They were alike, more so now than ever. And he had missed Eli. He wanted to see him. And he wanted to see him suffer. He wanted to see the look in Eli’s eyes when he lit them up with pain. He wanted his attention.” show less
I TOTALLY loved this creepy tale of two college roommates whose scientific discoveries take things a bit too far, catapulting them both into lives that will never be the same again. Such a simple thing, a thesis on whether or not extra-ordinary abilities might exist, and to take that one step further, whether they can be created in people. And suddenly, you have quite a disaster.
I found the dual timelines to be an interesting narrative style that kept things just enough off-kilter at first to get pieces of the story but not quite grasp what was going on, which was awesome. VE Schwab creates such memorable characters, and you can’t help but connect with and at times be repulsed by both Victor and Eli, neither of whom can be called show more entirely good or evil, but both operate in twisted shades of gray. I am SO SO excited Schwab will be writing a sequel to this one, as I can’t wait to see where things go from here! 5/5 stars.
Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. show less
I found the dual timelines to be an interesting narrative style that kept things just enough off-kilter at first to get pieces of the story but not quite grasp what was going on, which was awesome. VE Schwab creates such memorable characters, and you can’t help but connect with and at times be repulsed by both Victor and Eli, neither of whom can be called show more entirely good or evil, but both operate in twisted shades of gray. I am SO SO excited Schwab will be writing a sequel to this one, as I can’t wait to see where things go from here! 5/5 stars.
Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. show less
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Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Vicious
- Original publication date
- 2013-09-24
- People/Characters
- Victor Vale; Eli Ever (Eliot Cardale); Sydney Clarke; Mitchell Turner; Serena Clarke; Angie Knight
- Important places
- Merit; Lockland University
- Epigraph
- Life — the way it really is — is a battle not between Bad and Good, but between Bad and Worse.
—Joseph Brodsky - Dedication
- To Miriam and Holly, for proving time and again that they are ExtraOrdinary.
- First words
- Victor readjusted the shovels on his shoulder and stepped gingerly over an old, half-sunken grave.
- Quotations
- Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being hum... (show all)an. (p. 271)
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)A moment later, the cold ran up her arms, and caught her breath, and beneath her hands a heartbeat fluttered, as Victor Vale opened his eyes, and smiled.
- Publisher's editor
- Weinberg, Miriam
- Blurbers
- Wilson, F. Paul; Wilson, Daniel H.; Wells, Dan; Bledsoe, Alex; Wendig, Chuck; Kessler, Jackie Morse (show all 7); Cox, Greg
- Original language
- English US
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.6
- Canonical LCC
- PS3619.C4848
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Statistics
- Members
- 5,681
- Popularity
- 2,306
- Reviews
- 185
- Rating
- (4.01)
- Languages
- 7 — English, French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese (Portugal)
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 32
- ASINs
- 8