Review: Vicious, VE Schwab

Plenty of humans were
monstrous, and plenty of
monsters knew
how to play at being human.

Vicious has been on my shelves for a few years now and I really don't know why I haven't picked it up sooner. It is my third book by VE Schwab and the best one yet! This story is intense with suspense and doesn't let go of it till the end. 

Vicious is about two college roommates, Victor and Eli, who decide to test their theory about how ExtraOrdinary (EO) beings are made. Obviously, something went wrong, because the story starts off ten years later with Victor fresh out of prison digging a grave with a twelve year old girl to get his revenge on Eli. As for Eli he has made his mission to eliminate all the EOs he can find. The book makes you follow the days/hours until Victor and Eli reunite, and you also follow them ten years earlier when they were best friends and how everything went wrong.

This book is so morally gray it is amazing. Victor wants revenge on Eli and will stop at nothing to get it and Eli won't stop his killing spree until all the EOs are dead. Both characters sound awful in their own rights. However, there is a huge difference between the two: Victor knows what he's doing is wrong, whereas Eli thinks he is killing people for the greater good and considers himself a godsend. 

You can love and hate them. You can understand them or not. But you can't deny they have flaws and that's what makes this book so great, nobody is perfect and everyone has a darker side and despite the anti-hero going on here everyone can recognize himself in one of the characters. It definitely changes from all the super herostories we encounter and with which we can never measure up.