Vicious and Vengeful
Vicious, by V. E. Schwab, was a confusing, frustrating, sensational book. The hero/protagonist was definitely not a hero, not likable, had no redeeming qualities, and yet you root for him. The villain terms himself the hero, and you see his vulnerability and his delusion and want to like him, and yet you can’t. The secondary characters are all compelling—fully fleshed out, insinuatingly engaging, and also impossible to pigeonhole.
On the surface, the premise is a comic book—ExtraOrdinary people (EOs) who have special abilities—but there the comparison ends, because they go around using their abilities, not for good, but for their own advantage and to others’ detriment, unless they are in the mood to be lenient or merciful, or the person is useful to them. This isn’t what we’ve been taught to believe “superheroes” would do, but…why not, really? If you woke up from a coma and discovered that you could tell everyone around you what to do and they would do it, would you refrain? If you were able to heal from any wound, no matter how grievous, would you still act like a normal human being fearful of death, or would you take any risk, pull any stunt, knowing you couldn’t be hurt?
It’s a fair question. No one ever says, What impulse supplies the moral certitude of a Superman to always do good, never evil? Where is the moral ambiguity in these tales? This book is true science fiction, because the job of science fiction is always to ask, What if? and then try to supply the answer, and Schwab has done a superb job of going where seemingly no one has wanted to go before (at least to my admittedly limited knowledge). Bravo.
Vengeful, the continuation of the story, did not disappoint. Having said that, I don’t think it was quite what I was expecting, either. The parts I was expecting: She continued to write from her head-spinning stance of the first book, which is to say she jumped back and forth in time at will, reorienting the reader with every chapter heading. She also randomly switched perspectives between multiple characters. Not many authors can pull that off, and those who try sometimes actively irritate me, but Schwab can do anything she decides to do, it seems. She gave us the next chapters for each of her major characters from the first book, while further developing Stell’s campaign against the EOs, and she also introduced some kick-ass new ones, notably the powerful women, Marcella and June.
The new characters are part of what I wasn’t expecting. I thought this book would be the resolution of all the story lines among Victor and Eli, Sydney and Mitch, and this resolution is largely accomplished; but we also get a pretty thorough development of these two new people to the EO panoply. Marcella in particular is a gripping portrayal of what happens when a woman is consistently appreciated only as arm candy and she decides to let the world (husband first) know exactly what’s wrong with that picture. June is more of a picaresque character, popping in and out and supplying (dark) whimsy and intrigue; but Marcella is a force of nature, and we’re talking hurricane.
Ultimately, what makes this book as gripping as the first is that they are all terrible people, unmoored to any sense of absolute right or wrong, and Schwab makes you simply not care; or rather, she makes you care deeply, despite how horrifyingly cruel and brutal they may be. The juxtaposition of violence and murder with sweet family scenes incorporating mac and cheese and hot chocolate further solidify the irony.
The ultimate thing I wasn’t expecting is that this may not be the end. This was billed as a duology, but so many loose ends were left as possibilities; people walk off into the sunset, and where are they going? Who will stay together, who will be riven forever from one another, how will they live, what will they do? Now that some of them have achieved their objectives, what will be their life’s purpose? I felt like the characters who walked away at the end could be trusted to disappear out there and never resurface in fiction, but for one: The fact that we know so little about June—her back story, how she became the way she is, and her future intentions—gives me a suspicion that we haven’t seen the last of this world.
Shall we hope for a third tale?
The Book Adept 
I read Vicious last month and LOVED it! I described it to a friend as “gleefully violent”. And it looks like I’m going to love Vengeful just as much!
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Vicious has been on my TBR pile for a while. Now that there’s a sequel, I need to get busy!
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