Book Review: Vicious by Victoria Schwab

Genre: Superheroes, Science Fiction

Publisher: Tor

Publication Date: September 2013

Wendy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars

The way Schwab weaves the story and characters together is spellbinding, especially as she moves between the past and the present to paint a picture of Eli and Victor and their relationship.

Victor and Eli are young, brilliant college students on the edge of sociopathy, though Eli better hides his darker self behind a charming mask. In fact, it is the mask that attracted Victor to Eli in the first place, glimpsing the kindred spirit hiding behind the outward persona. The sneaking darkness is enough for Victor to overlook Eli’s irrational belief in God, especially when the two decide to play God in order to learn the mystery of E.O.s – Extraordinary human beings. E.O.s tend to keep to themselves, and the police and government do their best to keep their existence under wraps, but enough information has leaked out to spark Eli and Victor’s scientific interest.

Vicious references comic book super heroes and villains from time to time, while injecting some science and psychology that results in a pithy explanation of how superhumans are created. Once this is established and Eli and Victor succeed in turning themselves into E.O.s, the back and forth, past and present plot really takes off as the two former best friends go after each other with murderous intent.

It took me a while to warm up to the main character of Victor, from whose perspective the majority of the story is told. He is not meant to be a likable person, much less a likable character, and initially, I felt like Schwab was trying too hard to give us another empathy-free killer along the lines of Dexter Morgan. But as the story progresses, a lot of preconceptions slowly mutate into something else, particularly when Victor is joined by Mitch, his former cellmate in prison, and Sydney, a young E.O. they stumble across in their journey to find Eli.

The way Schwab weaves the story and characters together is spellbinding, especially as she moves between the past and the present to paint a picture of Eli and Victor and their relationship. We quickly come to understand the reason why they now hate each other so entirely, but their motivations are what Schwab teases through her thrilling back and forth storytelling process. The inevitable showdown between the two former friends is not at all predictable, as Schwab carefully introduces new elements all throughout the story that fit together like a perfectly crafted puzzle. Or rather, I should say that the final showdown is to be expected, but it becomes a race against chapters and time to find out exactly how it will all come together – and for whom it will all come together.