Review: Vicious

"You can't kill him."
"That may be. But half the fun is trying."

Vicious
Victoria Schwab
368 pages
Summary Link

Rating: 9

+50 points to Slytherin

WHAT I EXPECTED:

I've been reading a lot of books blind recently. I had added this to my "to read" pile a while back, but now that I've gotten around to it I don't remember why. I know it possibly involves evil superheroes and two enemies trying to destroy each other. Which is, frankly, all I need to know to make me ready to love it.

WHAT I GOT:

I try not to abuse the highest ratings, because then they lose their power. But Schwab's Vicious made the cut. This book deserves a full-length review and usually I know what I want to say, but this time I can't figure it out. "Fully developed characters," "gripping story," "great writing," "immensely satisfying," &c, &c. It's all true, but boring to spell out. There are some books that are good, and then there are books with that little extra something. That hook. You feel it as you read, that this one different. This one is better than the others.

For me, that realization came when I was reading a specific passage explaining the downward slide of one character for normal girl to, well, casual evil. Schwab wrote in such a way that I got it, I felt in my bones how tragic it was, how easy and inevitable it would have been.

This is a book about bad people but some of them are worse. Bad people, old foes, brothers-turned-adversaries. Villains. And you're drawn to them anyway. I found myself grinning along with Victor before wondering just what the hell kind of a person that made me. You get swept up in the mission and forget that morality should be involved. It's just so delicious, the idea of power and revenge. I'd like to say I worry I'd be exactly the same, but I try be honest with myself in all things and worrying implies uncertainty. Vicious knows damn well that we'd all be exactly the same.