Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Vicious

To be honest, this book did not live up to my expectations based on some of the reviews I had heard of it prior to reading it. Until about 75% into it, I was looking at rating it just about (if not less than) three stars. My main issue lies with the fact that one of the main characters seems to suddenly acquire very strong motivations for their actions that are not foreshadowed nor are they ever explained or explored in any detail. To me personally, this change made no sense and made it difficult to connect with the story. That being said, there are several clever little twists added to the plot in this final quarter of the book, that I felt it ultimately deserved a better rating. In addition to that, virtually every other character is interesting and fairly complex considering the limited time we get to explore each individual and relationship within such a fast-paced plot.

While I can't say I regret reading this book, I could not in all honesty recommend it to someone else. However, now having read the book and found so much of the later plot and character development interesting, I will probably read the sequel too. If you're happy to be infuriated with the way one of the central characters is written for most of a book, maybe this one is for you too.

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foggyoblio's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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abicaro17's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Ok amazing! Schwab does it again! This story of power dynamics and friendship is a powerhouse and i'm glad theres a second book. Victor and Eli are so similar in ways and yet fundamentally different morally. I usually hate multiple pov and third person writing but Schwab does it so well you dont even notice it. I think all the individual storylines were crafted so beautifully and connected so well. I think this just suffers from what every multiple pov book does: a lack of connection to the characters. You feel for them yes, but when the end approached I didn't really care what happened to them, or I knew it would all be ok (either or). Im so excited to read the second installment and I hope its just as good if not better than the first!

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katerina_l's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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erebus53's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

This is an origin story of supervillains. It tells the story of a couple of guys who were in premed when they started experiments to learn more about near death experiences. I got a vibe like the movie Flatliners(1990) with the level of obsession., and in with that, one of the main characters is called Victor, which is the name of another obsessed young student who fascinated himself with reanimation in a completely different classic novel... I doubt that is more than coincidence. The strangely gifted people are called EOs (extra-ordinaries) and much like Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, or X-Men, Spider-Man, and the NBC series Heroes the book explores what happens when people have impossible powers, and includes the argument about whether this is a physical or spiritual gift; whether it is deliberate and divine, or just a fluke.

The backdrop is clearly superheroic. You have a fictional city called Merit, which is an unremarkable, American town. The main characters have alliterative names, or names or descriptions that have significance to their powers, but from the get-go all the Vs made me feel like this is a lot more like Alan Moore than Stan Lee. For starters the "heros" are sociopathic before they even get started. There is nothing quite normal about these two college room-mates.

The story is tropey enough that it's fairly easy to get a handle on, even though it's told non-chronologically. Entire sections are flashbacks to 10 years ago. There are short memories that are repeated in different chapters.. one of which was long enough that I thought I might have accidentally lost my place and be reading the wrong bit. That was mildly irritating; a phrase can anchor something poetically without an entire callback.. that might work better if it was a movie (montage it, pitch it a little lower, put some echo on or something?) or maybe a graphic novel.. (make it yellowed like old paper.. or throw the colours out like a faded photo with no blue in it..)

The middle part of the story begins to lag a bit. But it picks up a little more as the things start to culminate. I do wish the ending felt a little more planned but it starts to become a little unclear what is going to happen. I do like that the story feels out the edges or limitations of the powers that people have, and explores a little of the synergy you can get when more than one person with a gift is working together. I think it would be marvelous if there were more people with normal strengths rather than uncanny things, but that is still included in the story.

This is a very different story to something like Hench (which is about jobbing for the supervillains), and has some similarity in YA stories like Songbirds and Snakes in which the mindset of the main character is toxic and dangerous. There is some bloody violence and necromancy in this story, so if you don't like dark then this isn't your book.

Clock this one up if you want to do a reading challenge where the hero is a bad guy, and it's set in a City starting with M (yes that's a challenge prompt for the 52 BookClub Chanllenge 2024).

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dizzybridge's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I was genuinely surprised by how gripping and insightful this book is. This was the first book I read where the narrator is definitely a villain, or at least nowhere near a good person, yet I found myself still so interested in seeing their development. The major themes of this book really challenge our ideas of what a villain looks like and how trauma can change you in many ways depending on who you choose to be and what you believe in. Totally recommend!

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itisnatal's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense fast-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

4.5

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gabym's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-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

5.0

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