Two science students at Lockland University, roommates, become close friends. They share a thirst for knowledge and a competitive drive. When the time comes for them to work on their thesis, the two friends find they are working on similar themes. When their research overlaps, the two decide to work together only to have a tragic fallout once the experiment works on one of them and not quite as well on the other. The two become enemies with neither truly emerging as the “hero” over the two decades in which they are at odds with each other. This is V.E. Schwab’s Vicious, her first powerful novel for the adult audience.
Readers familiar with comic books, especially The Fantastic Four and Watchmen might find some resonance in the tale of Victor Vale and Eli Ever, the two anti-protagonists of the novel. While the two young men may be evenly matched in their intelligence, Eli is far more outgoing, he knows how to interact and play people. Victor is the introvert. Despite their social differences, they become friends, even colleagues as they search for answers to their fantasies through science. They attempt to discover what circumstances lead one to become ExtraOrdinary (EO for short). In other words, how can people gain super powers in the same way that Spider-Man gained his super powers. The two friends come to realize Near Death Experiences (NDEs) are triggers for people gaining powers and set about, briefly, allowing each other to die in order to come back to life with a power based on their last willful thoughts before dying.
Through a non-linear narrative, we learn in the “present” of the novel, Victor has just broken out of prison after serving for 10 years. Initially, his reason for incarceration is not given, but hints leading up to the revelation paint a good picture. The two friends were successful in their attempts to gain super powers, but as a result their friendship is forever fractured.
The first half of the narrative was told mostly from Victor’s point of view, and Eli’s point of view entered into the second half of the narrative, even if it was still mostly from Victor’s POV, with some chapters throughout from the POV of Sarah and Sydney, sisters, one of whom winds up as Victor’s ‘sidekick’ and the other a romantic interest for Eli. Schwab jumped around in time, focusing on the days surrounding the time Eli and Victor conducted their experiments in the hopes of becoming EOs and the days and weeks leading up to their final confrontation. The shortened chapters with intertwined timelines did a fantastic job of building suspense on multiple levels. It seemed a natural way for the story to be told, and I suspect it was one of those tricks that took a great deal of effort to get correct, but felt effortless due to Schwab’s incredible storytelling powers.
I appreciated that Schwab’s characters called out the names of heroes like Spider-Man and Superman in the book rather than generic names, it lent a weight of credibility and believability to the novel. I also thought setting the story in a fictionalized major US city with a fictional university as the institution of learning lent it the feel of a comic-book story told in prose. Another element of the story that stood out was how actions most definitely have consequences in this world. One doesn’t come back from death, gain an extraordinary power and not give up something in return. This was theme that could be seen on all of the characters who could be considered EOs and Schwab’s consistency with this trait was another natural, logical point.
No character is completely the villain, nor can Victor or Eli be considered the hero, despite what either may otherwise think of themselves. Eli sees his powers as a gift from God and seeks to bring those who have returned from death’s embrace empowered back to death, for such a thing is unnatural, outside of God’s order. Victor wants revenge and to expose Eli for the true psychopath the real Eli who has always been hiding behind the charming façade. Of course, Schwab handles such characterization much more deftly and convincingly.
I’ve long been a reader of comic books, particularly those four-color stories featuring people in flashy costumes with great powers. In Vicious, Schwab was able to bring that same combination of modern mythmaking and over-the-top storytelling together into a superb novel. Just like the film Chronicle depicted perhaps the most plausible result of young people gaining superpowers, Watchmen being the standard bearer for people in costumes meting out justice in comic books, Vicious takes the same elements and has an equal effect in prose form and is a superb novel that works on every level.
Highly recommended.
© 2013 Rob H. Bedford
Tor / Hardcover September 2013
Hardcover ISBN 978-0-765-33534-0 368 Pages
Excerpt on Tor.com: http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/08/vicious-excerpt
http://veschwab.wordpress.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Tor
