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?

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 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 had 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.