Titan Books, 420 pp.
Published May 29, 2018
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 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?
To those requiring a clean-cut good guy to swoop in and save the day: beware. Populated by violent criminals, egomaniacs, and religious zealots, Vicious largely ignores the noble end of the moral spectrum in favor of following what happens when two powerful men focus their rage on one another. Although it revels in the darker side of human nature—despite their powers, Victor and Eli remain pointedly, achingly human—it never succumbs to nihilism. Certain superhero franchises should take notes from Schwab, who demonstrates that narratives populated by villains and their enablers can entertain without sending audiences into a depression.
The story of Victor and Eli's rivalry unfolds through a non-linear narrative, with the first half of the novel catching up on a decade of friendship and, later, betrayal, while the second half takes place over a single day in present time. Even without the helpful chapter sub-headings it's easy to keep up, as readers first meet one character digging up a grave and then gradually learn what drove him to that particular action. The sharp separation of timelines in the first half of Vicious establishes a theme of causality and consequences, realigning the spectrum of judgement from good versus evil, to bad versus worse.
College roommates and former best friends Victor and Eli make formidable opponents. Their experiments with near-death experiences and the creation of ExtraOrdinaries, or EOs, place matters vaguely in the realm of science fiction, although the exact mechanism for developing powers is never wholly uncovered. Though their reasons for pursuing such a course of study differ, both boys are made similar by oversize egos and an excess of pride. These qualities feed Victor's desire for revenge after a ten year imprisonment—which, to be fair, was for crimes he did commit—while in Eli they help sustain a self-righteous fervor against all other EOs, whom he has deemed unnatural.
Victor has fellow escaped convict Mitch and the mysterious runaway Sydney at his side, while Eli is oddly reliant on fellow EO Serena. Mitch encapsulates the idea of a gentle giant...at least where his allies are concerned. Only twelve years old, Sydney provides just the right touch of adolescent skepticism. Far from innocent or naive, though, she never bows to any expectations of serving as a moral compass. She also shares a connection with Serena, who may lack Eli's fanatical devotion to eradicating EOs, but wields her particular power to chilling effect.
With a cast whose morals all fall in varying shades of black, Vicious could easily turn quite dour. Instead it finds a healthy thread of humor, especially in Victor's sardonic outlook. Although it deals with themes like moral relativity and social responsibility, it never takes itself too seriously. Vicious packs in several genuine surprises which, when paired with the scattered timeline, help keep the reader on her toes.
V.E. Schwab proves that you can tell stories about villains without judgement or a persistent grim-dark atmosphere. She does more than tack on a few personal details atop their moral ambiguity: she makes their fractured sense of right and wrong so integral to their character that it informs every thought, every action, and therein lies the nuance of Victor, Eli, and their motley crews. Treating a cast of antagonists like regular people, finding all the sight variations in their shades of grey, ultimately produces a rewarding and challenging tale in no need of a hero.
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