Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will.

Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

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It’s been 297 days since David died–and came back.

He may have survived the avalanche, but the aftermath has been far worse. His wife moved out, taking his son with her, and a devastated David hasn’t left his house since, terrified of the mysterious new power that followed him home from the ill-fated expedition.

After months in seclusion, David’s ready for a fresh start, and ventures out, determined to keep his power in check. But David’s power isn’t the one he needs to worry about.

 

 

 

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DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MONITORS. I am posting on a Sunday! I didn’t post on Monday, so here we are, and you’ll have another post from me tomorrow.

Like I said last time, I’m not especially good at reviews. I tend to get too overwhelmed by all the FEEEEELS that I have for books, so I basically flail like a hyper fangirl. It worked for my last review, though, so I’m going to commence flailing all over again!

This time, I’m reviewing the 100 page preview of VICIOUS, and the short story from the same series, WARM UP, by V.E. Schwab, aka Victoria Schwab. When THE ARCHIVED was released, the same sneaky 100 page preview was released, and I remembered from then how my feelings of ajsklfjalgj!!!?!!?! were enormous because I only had 100 pages, and the woman can write a mean cliffhanger. I was going to resist the preview, but what can I say, I’m a sucker for beautiful writing, and Victoria’s prose is like poetry without being overstuffed purple prose. The woman has SKILLS. So, onwards!

REASONS WHY SERENA LIKED VICIOUS AND WARM UP, AND WHY SHE THINKS YOU SHOULD READ THEM, TOO.

1. NANA NANA NANA NANA BATMAN VICTOR!
   • I think my fellow adventurer Kristy would be suitably impressed with Victoria’s villain, Victor. When we first meet him, he’s digging up a grave with a young girl, having escaped prison. Why is he digging up a grave? It’s not entirely obvious at first, but no one ever digs up graves for nice reasons. Everything about this situation is foreboding, and we ought not like Victor, but dammit, we do. He might be the ‘villain’ of the book, but he is the protagonist, so we want him to succeed. It’s wonderful what the right POV will do. If we were given the POV of Eli, the guy with a power he (seemingly) uses for good, a guy who put Victor in jail (I assume), then we’d probably be rooting for him to overcome Victor, BUT NO, WE’RE NOT! Victoria uses flashbacks cleverly. It’s not like we’re taking trips to the Department of Backstory, because even though we’re going back in time to when Victor and Eli were friends in university, the story itself is moving forward, and we’re learning how, exactly, they figured out to gain powers. Plus, I’m pretty damn sure that Victor is a smoking hot fox and I want to be his sidekick.
     One of my favourite character descriptions is of Eli, however.

     On the surface, Eli seemed perfectly normal, but now and then Victor would catch a crack, a sideways glance, a moment when his roommate’s face and his words, his look and his meaning, would not line up. Those fleeting slices fascinated Victor. It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other’s skin. And that their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the colour of the thing beneath.

     How badly do you want to read this book right now? The right answer is VERY.

2. NANA NANA NANA NANA GENESIS!
   • There are so many genesis stories out there with superheroes, but it’s refreshing to see a whole new crop of them, and Victoria’s spin on it is gritty and exciting. There’s nothing sweet and innocent about this book. The key to unlocking powers? It’s in dying. You teeter on the verge of death and you come back changed. Victor’s biggest mistake is in three words: I’ll go first. In being the first of them to hand his life over to suicide (though he, of course, does not intend to remain dead) he has to be the guinea pig. It doesn’t seem to work, but that doesn’t stop them from trying again, and Eli is given a greater gift than Victor for figuring out how to do it better. It’s easy to see where bitterness and resentment would change a friendship, and indeed, cultivate a nemesis, but hot damn, this is exciting stuff. Eli is a hero, but not likeable. Victor is a villain, but I adore him. That’s some damn fine character work right there.
3. NANA NANA NANA NANA CLEVER!
   • I felt equally smart and stupid reading this, because holy shit, I was blown away by how clever Victoria is. It comes through her characters, Victor and Eli, who are geniuses. It’s one thing to tell us that they’re smart, but it takes a level of intelligence to be able to portray that, and it’s carried off skilfully here. It surrounds the thesis part of the book, where Victor and Eli are discovering how to become E.O’s, but while I stress that it is clever, it’s not inaccessible, either, which is an important distinction. I say I felt stupid, but only because I don’t think I’d ever be able to show that level of cleverness in a character, but I understood everything they were saying. That’s a good trick to have, in writing, and I admire it enormously.
4. NANA NANA NANA NANA TRADING CARDS!
   • We haven’t seen a lot of Serena yet, but guys, there’s a Serena. This is reason enough for me to be interested. At last, a Serena who is more of a BAMF than Vanderwoodsen! I get the distinct impression that she is a bad bad bad bad evil terrible awful evil bad bitch, but I don’t care. I already dig her, and I want her cape. I mean LOOK. Even in this trading card (designed by the author and asjdkflag how cool is it?!) Serena looks like she’s got swagger. All of the trading cards are cool, from Sydney with her dog, Eli and his mask, Victor and his inked out words – I WILL LEAVE A MARK – they each give such a strong sense of what kind of character we can expect, and let me tell you, this book is teeming with cool characters. I’m this enthusiastic and I’m not even done yet.
5. NANA NANA NANA NANA PREVIEW!
   • If the 100 page preview wasn’t teasing enough, there is a prequel to the book on tor.com! This story doesn’t include Victor, but it does include someone else very important, albeit briefly. It follows a character named Dave who died in an avalanche, but who didn’t stay dead, and now can control temperature, though he can’t seem to warm up. It’s a quick and brilliant read, and it’ll whet your appetite for what’s to come next!

 

Though I am still feeling ajfkljlkjgaskljfjlk because I need the rest of it now, I am so enthused to get more of it that I am already certain that I will love this book. I hope that there will be an entire series of it.

NOW! Here’s all the places where you can stalk Victoria online. You can pre-order VICIOUS here, but even better, you can read WARM UP for free on tor.com! GO ON, GET!

♥ Serena