Vicious by V.E. Schwab
Vicious by V.E. Schwab
I really enjoyed this book and the way it flashbacks from the present to about 10 years prior where 2 of our main characters start to dissolve their friendship due to an almost impossible circumstance.
Victor and Eli are close friends attending college, drawn to each other mostly because each has a darkness hiding beneath the calm or charismatic exteriors they portray to others. Eli starts a thesis in one of their classes about EOs or ExtraOrdinary people and suddenly Eli and Victor both find that with a harrowing near-death experience, they can create EO abilities within themselves and do just that.
10 years later, we find Victor breaking out of prison, determined to kill Eli. The rest of the book unfolds as we find out what really happened that broke this friendship apart, and how each of these men are handling these new found abilities. We meet a few new characters along the way, some with EO abilities, and some without, and suddenly a gripping and dark timeline unfolds. Will someone die, and who will it be? With all the betrayal and loss all these characters have experienced, how sane are they, or have they all dissolved to sociopath tendencies?
I truly enjoyed each and every character in this book. All of them are extremely well developed. For some of the characters, you are almost immediately thrust into their minds and live their experiences through their point of view. For others, you see them first through others eyes until you finally get a small snippet into their own mind. Somehow, it works for each character, just the right amount of observation or third person narrative that makes the character real. You find other small storylines for each of the characters that are interesting and really add to the overall plot.
I also love how Victor alters his parents' self-help books in an ultimate rebellion. The small snippets we get of when he blackouts entire pages and is left with meaningful phrases gives you this insight to Victor, and it was also just so clever. A little break of the action but still so interesting..
“Be lost. Give up. give In. in the end It would be better to surrender before you begin. be lost. Be lost And then you will not care if you are ever found.“
I definitely recommend this book to readers who enjoy a darker story, and characters who are twisted just enough. It was entertaining and compelling from the beginning to the end.
Synopsis: 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 interested reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordianary abilities. But when their thesis moves from academic to experimental, things go horribly wrong. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to find his old friend, now foe. Who will be left alive at the end?