Reviews with content warning for Medical trauma - Vengeful

Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

57 reviews

leweylibrary's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I do think I like the first one better, although I did still love this book and really enjoy reading it. My main gripes are that I wanted more of Marcella's story, particularly her rise to power, and more about June. I love that there were some badass ladies added into this one, but after we got their backstory and caught up to the present, we suddenly got much less of them? Idk.

I also wanted more from the ending!! There was so much action and craziness, and I absolutely refuse to believe that

Eli actually, truly died because what a shit way for him to go really, that doctor was a psycho asshole, and I refuse to accept Victor's story being left at a "oh well maybe he's on his way to figuring out a cure and he has this one thing to stall it for now. I just think there's so much more to explore there.

Basically, I feel quite strongly that she needs to write a third book.

Now for the things I liked. The pacing, especially towards the end, was so fun. Those chapter headings making it clear that time was ticking towards some big final moment was so enticing. I still really enjoy Eli and Victor's dynamic even when they're nowhere near each other (well, sort of). I also really enjoyed all the backstory we got from Eli since there wasn't much of it in the first book, it was really focused on Victor's story and POV. So it was fun seeing once they met each other how Eli's opinion of Victor and how he thought about their shared moments differed from Victor's. There were also just some really cool abilities in this book, like how cool is it that Marcella could just ruin shit and June was basically a living voodoo doll? That's the best part of these books, the abilities and how the person got them and what they cost and what they still cost. Victor's struggles with his power after coming back to life is also so interesting and is definitely worth exploring even more in another book imo. Like do we think

he may figure out how to take away his power and that's how he can survive? What about Sydney and her growing power? Thank goodness she didn't bring Serena back after all lol. And what about June, will she find Sydney again? I just have so many unanswered questions damn it lol

Lastly, thank you V. E. Schwab, for never letting

the dog stay permanently dead 🙌

Now please write a third book thank yooouuu

Quotes:

Perhaps she was glass. But glass is only brittle until it breaks.
Then it's sharp. (17)
Victor hadn't spent a lot of time in strip clubs. He'd never understood their appeal--never been aroused by the half naked bodies, their writhing oiled forms--but he hadn't come to the Glass Tower for the show. He was looking for someone special... He had craved a lot of things--power, revenge, control--but sex was never one of them. Even with Angie... he'd wanted her, of course, wanted her attention, her devotion, even her love. He'd cared about her, would have found ways to please her--and perhaps found his own pleasure in that-- but for him, it had never been about sex. (51)
It was a bloody work of art, that shift, and the bouncer blinked, confused, but June knew from experience--when people saw something they didn't understand, they couldn't hold on. I saw became I think I saw became I couldn't have seen became I didn't see. Eyes were fickle. Minds were weak. (57)
"If you kill all the EOs you meet," she said," how are you better than Eli?" (73)
Mitch had that look on his face, that carefully blank look that adults when they were trying to convince you everything was fine. They always assumed that if they didn't tell you a thing, you wouldn't know it. But that wasn't true.
Serena used to say that she could tell when someone was lying, because all those unsaid things hung in the air, making it heavy, like the pressure before a storm.
Sydney might not know the full scope of Victor's lie, but the wrongness was still there, taking up space. (82)
The thing about mistakes was that they weren't always big, or obvious. Sometimes they were simple. Small. The decision to keep walking. The turn left instead of right. Those few extra steps and the wrong direction. (94)
"You're a child, and I promised to protect--"
"A promise you can't keep is just another lie," she snapped. (96)
But it wasn't all Serena's fault.
Her sister had been lost for a really long time when Eli found her. Sydney had been lost too, but Victor had been the one to find her.
It wasn't Serena's fault that Sydney got the hunter and she got the wolf. (99)
She once had a yoga instructor who compared the mind to a house. Marcella had rolled her eyes at the time, but now she imagined going room to room, switching off the lights. Here was fear, switch. Here was panic, switch. Here was confusion, switch.
Here was pain.
Here was anger.
Here was her husband, that cheating fuck.
Here was him slamming her head into the table.
Here was his arms sweeping the candles.
Here was her voice breaking, her lungs filling with smoke.
Here was his back as he walked away, and left her to die.
That light, she left on. She marveled at the way a group writer inside her head, at the warmth that came with it, rippling through her skin. (111)
She was nursing a beer in a glass bottle, and she was bored--bored by the music, and the boys who swaggered over every now and then to flirt, and then stormed away, sulking, when she turned them down. She was bored by being called beautiful, and then a bitch. Stunning, and then stuck up. A ten, and then a tease. (117)
Marcella had always been pretty. The kind of pretty people couldn't ignore. Bright blue eyes and pitch black hair, a heart-shaped face atop the lean, clean lines of a model. Her father told her she'd never have to work. Her mother said she'd have to work twice as hard. In a way, both of them were right.
Her body was the first thing people saw.
For most, it seemed to be the last thing, too. (117-18)
Sooner or later, the pastor would glimpse the devil in his son again, and lead Eli back to the chapel. Sometimes the beatings were months apart. Sometimes days. Sometimes Eli thought he deserved it. Needed it, even. He would step up to the cross, and curl his fingers around the cold metal cross, and pray--not to God, not at first, but to his father. He prayed that the pastor would stop seeing whatever he saw, while he carved new feathers into the torn wings of Eli's back.
Eli learned not to scream, but his eyes would still blur with tears, the colors in the stained glass running together until all he saw was light. He held on to that, as much as to the steel cross beneath his fingers.
Eli didn't know how he was broken, but he wanted to be healed.
He wanted to be saved. (152)
There had to be away-- to find EOs, to contain them. Maybe, one day, to use them. EOs we're dangerous, yes, some catastrophically. So, but what if, among the lost and the deranged, there were those who could be fixed, given purpose, made whole? What if that's didn't change a person's nature, only amplified it? (170)
You're not blessed , or divine, or burdened. You're a science experiment.
Maybe Victor was right.
Maybe Eli was just as broken, just as damned, as every other EO. It was true, he hadn't felt that presence the night he killed. Victor. Hadn't felt anything like peace.
But that didn't absolve him of his task.
He still had a purpose. And obligation. To save others, even if he couldn't save himself. (175)
At fifteen, the personality he'd crafted was nearly perfect... He had a winning smile and an easy laugh, and nobody knew about the scars on his back or the shadows in his past. Nobody knew that it was all an act, that none of it came naturally. (177)
An EO isn't just the product of their catalyst. They are the product of the person they were before. The circumstances, not also the psyche. (183)
How many men would she have to turn to dust before one took her seriously? (266)
Some people were matches, a bit of light and no heat. And some were furnaces, all heat but little light. And then, once in a blue moon, there was a bonfire, something so hot and bright you couldn't stand too near without burning.
Marcella was a bonfire if ever June saw one.
Of course, even bonfires eventually went out, smothered by their own ashes. (319-20)
Sydney missed her sister.
But she missed the version of Serena who had loved and protected Sydney, made her younger sister feel safe, and seen. And that Serena had died in ice, not fire. (401)
"All the more reason to go the other way. You two can circle each other forever, but there's only one way it ends, Victor, and it's not in your favor."
"Thanks for the confidence," said Victor, dryly.
Mitch shook his head." You and your vengeance..."
But it wasn't vengeance.
Whatever's happened to you, however you're hurt, you've done it to yourself.
Campbell had been right.
Victor had to take responsibility. For himself. And for the monster he'd helped to create. Eli. (433)

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cowardlyteaman's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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pelb's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Here’s the thing, I wanted to love this book. The writing style is great, I love all the characters, and the powers are cool. I loved that we got to see more of Eli’s backstory, I felt like I understood his character a lot better after that. Here’s my main problems:

1. The focus on new characters
- there were two new characters introduced, which seemed cool at first. They were good characters with interesting abilities, however, it felt like they were thrown in out of nowhere and then they took over the story. I felt like they could’ve had their own spin off story, rather than being put in this book. Their presence is what killed it for me, because it detracted from the main plot line and caused the downfall of my second problem:

2. The ending
- I could’ve overlooked everything else if it wasn’t for the ending. It was extremely rushed and felt unfinished, which was very disappointing after all the buildup. There was no satisfying conclusion I was looking for and I felt confused by the end, wondering why it wasn’t a trilogy, because the story is very clearly not over. Now if she actually comes back and makes a third book, which I’ve heard she might, that would significantly change my opinion of this book, because it was a very enjoyable read. I don’t think she’s going to though, so I am very disappointed.

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theintrovertsbooks's review

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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currently_introverting's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad medium-paced

3.75

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lizziaha's review

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dark

Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.5

The sheer breadth of this book is very impressive. There are so many moving parts and ve schwab manages to weave them together so intricately. That being said, because there are so many moving parts, there are still some loose threads that I desperately want to pull. I’m not sure if there will ever be another book, but I want one!!!! Part of the reason that these books are so compelling is because they have a very Batman-villainesque feeling to them and there’s not really a hero to hang your hopes on, so you have to decide which of your morals you will set aside as you choose who to root for.

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jwells's review against another edition

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dark emotional fast-paced

I don't know how to review Vicious and Vengeful, except that I read them practically compulsively, and could hardly put them down. I don't usually like an antihero, or a book that is lean on likeable characters, but that didn't seem to apply to these.

I finished Vengeful thinking about Brandon Sanderson's sliding scales of protagonists: likeability, competence, and proactivity. He says that if you are sliding one of them down, you can compensate by sliding the others up. If all of them are low, readers lose interest in your protagonist. Victor is extremely high on proactivity. I also thought, there might be another scale for vulnerability: both Victor and Eli discover in this book that they are far from invulnerable, in spite of their superpowers, and that also makes them more sympathetic and interesting as protagonists.

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_persephone's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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idroplungs's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The majority of the book is not as good as the first. Too many characters being followed and too many moving pieces making it too easy to put down. Stick with it though as the ending is surely worth it since the last 80pages flew by without being able to stop it. Schwab's EOs are an amazing twist on super heroes or super villains, keeping the line blurry is what keeps it interesting.

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jkneebone's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I loved the first book in this universe, Vicious, but for some reason Vengeful did not quite live up to my expectations. Picking up five years after the events of Vicious, in Vengeful we find Victor, Mitch, and Sydney still on the move, traveling from place to place as they try to figure out what's wrong with Victor (after his reanimation by Sydney, his power is on the fritz). Meanwhile Eli, after being arrested, was given over to a new program called EON which is dedicated to hunting down and capturing EOs. This book also introduces us to several new characters: Marcella, a mob wife-turned-EO after her cheating husband tried to murder her; and June, an EO with the power to assume the form of any human she has touched, who has been keeping up a secret long-distance friendship with Sydney.

There is a lot happening in this book, and though parts of it were really interesting to me - we finally get some Eli POV and find out more about his history! - there was, for me, a bit too much going on, to the point that I found it a bit hard to know what to focus on. Eli and Victor's obsession with each other continues - Eli has visions of Victor's ghost and suspicions that he isn't dead, and once they're confirmed he wants to rectify that himself; Victor is determined to keep Eli from getting out of EON - but we also have Marcella's quest for vengeance against her husband/subsequent desire to take over the entire Merit mob, and the addition of EON as a source of conflict/potential fear for most of the characters. There's just a lot going on! I didn't find Marcella particularly compelling when contrasted with the other characters, and the sort-of role-reversal of Victor and Eli

-not only is Eli imprisoned while Victor roams free, Victor starts trying to find EOs who might be able to help him, and then killing them when they can't help - he's literally using the system Eli perfected to kill EOs, albeit for a different reason -

didn't make a ton of sense to me; it felt like a re-hashing of the first book in some ways.

It was still a quick and engaging read - although definitely not for those with a sensitivity to violence or graphic images, as there was even more gross and gory stuff happening in this book - but for me, lacked the delicious darkness of the first book. The characters were nasty, but the motivations felt muddied - and maybe that was the point, but whatever it was, it just didn't work for me as much as the first book did.

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