No Heroes, Only Vicious Villains, in V.E. Schwab’s Superhero Epic Vengeful
In the years since the publication of her adult debut novel Vicious in 2013, Victoria “V.E.” Schwab has leveled up as a writer—and more than once. These days, she’s a New York Times bestseller in adult, YA, and middle grade fiction, with stacks of beloved books bearing her name.
Vengeful (Signed B&N Exclusive Book)
Hardcover $25.99
Vengeful (Signed B&N Exclusive Book)
By V. E. Schwab
Hardcover $25.99
That all makes Vengeful, the long-in-coming followup to Vicious, all the more interesting. At a time when many fantasy novels seem to be one-two-three trilogies by default, it’s fascinating to revisit the world and characters after so much time has passed. Undoubtedly this is not the sequel we’d have gotten in 2014 (indeed, Vicious was originally conceived as a standalone), but I think the book we got is the better for it.
That all makes Vengeful, the long-in-coming followup to Vicious, all the more interesting. At a time when many fantasy novels seem to be one-two-three trilogies by default, it’s fascinating to revisit the world and characters after so much time has passed. Undoubtedly this is not the sequel we’d have gotten in 2014 (indeed, Vicious was originally conceived as a standalone), but I think the book we got is the better for it.
Vicious follows Victor Vale and Eli Ever, two friends turned rivals who go to extreme lengths to test a theory about how special abilities might manifest in humans at the cusp of life and death. Their efforts bore fruit, creating a world in which people with super powers really exist, but their ambitions also carried a terrible cost, and the story that resulted has no heroes, only villains. Its final pages saw Victor sacrifice himself in a dangerous bid to drop off the radar of the law enforcement and frame his former best friend, Eli, for his murder. (Dying is a brilliant act of subterfuge when you know a girl—Sydney—with the power to resurrect the dead.)
In Vengeful, we learn that Sydney’s mastery of her powers is far from perfect. The resurrected come back different, and that goes double for those with ExtraOrdinary abilities. Victor’s power to manipulate electrical current, including the electricity that runs through human nervous systems, is far less reliable post-death, and has a tendency to short out and fry his own brain, killing him (again). Each time it happens, his deaths lasts longer and longer, causing him to seek help, first from medical professionals, then other EOs. He winds up dragging his followers—Sydney; Dominic (who can phase in and out of time); and their newest teammate, hacker and powerless hanger-on Mitch—across the country in search of a cure.
Meanwhile, Eli is locked up in a special prison built to contain EOs, run by a new branch of the government called EON, headed up by Director Stell, the police officer who has been tracking Victor and Eli from the beginning. The director is furious when he learns a mad doctorin EON’s employ has been rather gruesomely dissecting and experimenting on Eli, testing the limits of his ability to regenerate, in the name of science, but Stell is facing pressure from the Board to make the EO prisoners useful while in containment. If it can’t be done through experimentation, he needs to find another way. Eli, eager to end the pain of his torture, agrees to help hunt his own kind from inside his prison cell, aided by a closely monitored computer and whatever information Stell’s agents can dig up.
Vicious
Hardcover $29.99
Vicious
By V. E. Schwab
In Stock Online
Hardcover $29.99
These are the bones of Vengeful, but the book also introduces a brand new character: mob wife Marcella Riggins. Introduced (and seemingly murdered by her husband) in the prologue, she doesn’t come into play until later in the book, but her story is perhaps the novel’s most powerful. Through flashbacks, we learn that her husband Marcus was her college sweetheart, making our foreknowledge of her fate all the more tragic. But Marcella is not about tragedy. Her personality is too strong, her will for vengeance too powerful, to just lie down and take it. Her parting promise to her husband—“I will ruin you”— forms the thread that tethers her to life and shapes her powers after she’s revived. The most vengeful of them all, Marcella develops the power to bring any object to ruin with a touch, and she serves as the catalyst that will ultimately bring Eli and Victor back together in an epic showdown worthy of a summer blockbuster.
These are the bones of Vengeful, but the book also introduces a brand new character: mob wife Marcella Riggins. Introduced (and seemingly murdered by her husband) in the prologue, she doesn’t come into play until later in the book, but her story is perhaps the novel’s most powerful. Through flashbacks, we learn that her husband Marcus was her college sweetheart, making our foreknowledge of her fate all the more tragic. But Marcella is not about tragedy. Her personality is too strong, her will for vengeance too powerful, to just lie down and take it. Her parting promise to her husband—“I will ruin you”— forms the thread that tethers her to life and shapes her powers after she’s revived. The most vengeful of them all, Marcella develops the power to bring any object to ruin with a touch, and she serves as the catalyst that will ultimately bring Eli and Victor back together in an epic showdown worthy of a summer blockbuster.
Despite the comic book trappings, however, this is no book for the casual reader. With a story that spans multiple points of view and unfolds across several shifting timelines, it demands careful attention. Thankfully, though we’ve been away from these characters for five years, there’s just enough backstory offered to bring us back up to speed. And spiderweb plotting aside, the characters are the through-line that really matters, and each ends the novel in a very different place from where they started.
Take Sydney: she’s the youngest member of the group, and her power over life and death also means she doesn’t age as quickly as your average mortal. She was a child in Vicious, but by the end of Vengeful, we see her as an fully-fledged adult—but still trapped in a child’s body. She has no family, and she’s come to understand, along with readers, that although she can empathize with Victor’s motivations for doing the terrible things he does, that doesn’t make him the hero of the story. She’s growing in her power and in her spirit, and, ultimately, she and Mitch are the only ones worth rooting for, as all of the other EOs are hellbent on creating chaos and in pursuit of their selfish and misguided quests for revenge, justice, or survival.
Vengeful combines shades of Mary Shelley with a shadowy government agency worthy of the X-Men and a plot that asks deep questions about ethics, revenge, life, and death. In a world where there are no heroes, whose side will you choose?
Vengeful is available now in an exclusive Barnes & Noble edition featuring a bonus short story.