Vicious, V.E. Schwab (2018)
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Books with a main character like Robert Pattinsonâs Batman?
The same anger, edginess, intelligence, but also that boyishness (?) or âsweetnessâ kind of, from Bruce Wayne in the movie (when he wasnât Batman).
Bibbit's Quick Rec.
Vicious, by V.E. Schwab captures this post perfectly.
Two profoundly troubled university students discover the secret to superpowers, at tremendous cost. Both of them already have serial killer energy, but after what can only be described as a breakup it's not just an energy.
After all, there's only one other person in the world that knows how to gain superpowers. Why would either let the other one live? Neither protagonist intends to. Both leave a trail of bodies in their wake. Decades later, a small girl named Sadie crawls out of the lake where she drowned and into the paths of both of them.
Firmly in the thriller mode, Vicious is one of those books that pulls you from one chapter to the next until you've stayed up entirely too late. If you're into the fantasy of superpowers, that's here. If you aren't, you can just enjoy it as a killer thriller.
Schwab explained once that she writes from the back of her books, starting with a satisfying ending and discovering how her characters got there. Often, I've felt that practice hurts her books. They work backwards, away from a polished first page, the last words she wrote, to her first stumbling start at the end of the book. The back half of her Shades Of Magic books always seems to loose momentum. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue loses character definition as it moves further away from its wildly compelling start.
Vicious is an exception. It shares her talent for rip roaring starts and works inexorably towards the ending. A razor sharp conclusion you can see coming, so long as you don't avert your eyes.
/Bibbit
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