Vicious

Vicious by V.E. Schwab, narrated by Ashley Zhangazha

I have been hearing a lot about V.E. Schwab’s writing over the past couple of years, so when I was looking for a new audiobook to listen to at the end of last year, it seemed a good time to try one of her books. I had been intrigued by the premise of Vicious, so I was excited to start there. I enjoyed my experience listening to Vicious, finding it to be an engaging narrative with intriguing and very flawed characters. However, despite that, I probably will not be picking up the sequel any time soon, as I felt that this was a complete narrative with a satisfying conclusion on its own.

Vicious follows Victor and Eli, two former college friends who, ten years later, are trying to kill each other. The narrative moves between their time in college, in which they tried dangerous experiments that led to a tragic incident, and the present day in which they are hunting each other down. In the interim, Eli has been hunting down people with supernatural abilities, known as EOs (extra-ordinaries), assisted by an EO with an ability that allows her to manipulate those around her, including Eli. Meanwhile, Victor has been in prison, plotting his revenge on Eli, who betrayed him all those years ago.

The characters of Victor and Eli are obviously key to the reader’s investment in the narrative. Both are unlikable, readily sacrificing others’ lives and their own morality for their own ends, whether that be Eli’s arrogant belief that he has been given an ability in order to rid the world of EOs, or Victor’s single-minded obsession with outdoing Eli that has dominated his life from their college days. Yet, with Victor as the primary narrative voice for the first part of the novel, the reader is rooting for him to defeat Eli, even when Victor’s actions are themselves awful. As a reader who needs to connect with a character in order to enjoy a book, it was the characters of Sydney, the innocent bystander dragged into this mess by her sister, and Mitch, Victor’s friend from prison, who compelled me to keep reading. Sydney’s relationship with her sister, and Mitch’s reservations about Victor’s methods, were just as intriguing to me as the history between Victor and Eli, and I felt much more emotion in their experiences in the climactic encounter than the two protagonists.

The world of EOs which Schwab has created in Vicious is a fascinating and intriguing one. Although it is urban fantasy, using magic in a setting that looks very like our world, Victor and Eli’s encounters with EOs feel very distinct. Rather than revealing every detail, Schwab allows the reader to discover alongside Victor and Eli’s research how EOs came to exist, giving insight into only the aspects of EOs that those two characters would care about. Discovering the ability of each EO proved to be an interesting aspect of the narrative, although I would have been interested in spending a little more time with other EOs.

Overall, this was a fun and interesting read that proved to be good escapism on a number of drives. Although I did not connect with either of the two main perspective characters, there were plenty of other characters that I could connect with that kept me engaged throughout. However, I was happy with this narrative finishing in the place that it did, and I do not feel the need to continue on with the sequel. I would recommend Vicious to those who have an interest in fantasy with real-world settings, as well as intrigue surrounding the character histories.