A review by storyorc
Vicious by V.E. Schwab

Did not finish book. Stopped at 40%.
Was hoping for Magneto and Professor X but got a less funny version of Tom & Jerry. Stalled my reading for 6 months.

You can't make a toxic friendship spin into ruin, dragging everything else down with it, with only one train wreck! Both of these nasty little men need to be dangling hope of reunion. They should...
  1. Be tortured by nostalgia. Our villain protagonist, Victor, was obsessed with Eli but Eli barely cared about him. 
  2. Have traits that complete, yet enable each other. Victor is resourceful and spiteful and Eli is... supposed to be charming? We're told as much every time he's mentioned but all we see is bland smiling and basic politeness. Victor is the more successful recruiter. 
  3. Let slip glimpses of the demons that will lead them to tragedy. Victor comes by his loneliness in an odd way, but is relatable - you can root for him. Eli's hypocrisy is irritating in its obviousness and his god-complex has the nuance of a Z-tier Batman rogue.

Whatever comic-style bombast Schwab was aiming for in her writing style fell utterly flat as well, ending up only coy and over-explained. I kept checking if I had somehow got an early draft instead of the finished book. The Near Witch, another of her books, was not at all like this, so I assume the style in Vicious was just an unfortunate experiment.

Victor's superpower and the way Schwab describes him using it is sick though.