Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: V.E. Schwab
Genres: Science Fiction
Pub date: Sep. 2013 (read Nov. 2018)
Series: Villains #1

I have a weird relationship with Victoria Schwab. I really liked her Darker Shades of Magic trilogy, but for some reason it took me absolutely forever to read. I still don’t know if it was just bad timing and I was really busy, or if it the story was somehow slow paced (despite not being slow paced). I know, it sounds weird, but it took me forever to get into the books.

Then I read Our Savage Song, which is the first book in her duology, and I just didn’t feel it at all. I think I gave it 3 stars at the time, but in retrospect I was very uninspired by the book and decided to abandon the series without reading the second one. Vicious sounds a lot different than her other books though, and I’ve heard lots of people say they like it even better than the darker shades trilogy (high praise indeed!), so I was curious to pick it up.

Vicious was totally different from what I was expecting, but I can absolutely see why people like it so much. I was enthralled with the story from start to finish. The plot was mildly confusing at first with the jumping back and forth in time, but I definitely could never accuse this book of being slow paced. I don’t know what I was expecting from Vicious, but it wasn’t a story about near death experiences gone wrong. Plus it was extremely Vicious, which I know, I know, it’s baked right into the title, but the story was a lot nastier than I was expecting and I loved it.

I thought the plotting was fantastic. I think the jumping back and forth between timelines worked really well in this story and I liked how the story felt like it was split in two. The first half is really Victor and Eli’s origin story. To give you a quick synopsis, this is basically the story of two college roommates who do their thesis on EO’s – people with ExtraOrdinary powers. But through the course of their studies, things go horribly wrong and the two students end up as enemies. The first half of the book is very much the science of their studies and how things go so horribly wrong between them, whereas the second half is much more action oriented with both men trying to get revenge on each other.

I thought the world building was fantastic in explaining where EO’s come from and all the different superpowers the characters have are really interesting. The characters were also fantastic and I loved Victor’s little ersatz family with Mitch and Sidney. Eli and Serena were great antagonists and I loved how clever the story was. That Schwab makes you really care about some pretty broken characters who make questionable, and often bad, decisions.


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