Vicious

V.W. Schwab has done it again…created a book full of strangeness and made it too compelling to put down. The perfect title…villainous deeds abound in this deadly game. A thriller mixed with deadly magic.

I recommend this book to anyone I know want to start their reading journey. It was my first V.E Shwab book and its very telling I'm planning to read her other books. I don't want to get into the main story as its better to go into this complete blind.

This book was really refreshing. I mean definitely dark but I absolutely loved the concept and really enjoyed reading it! I always love a book that has a good philosophical question behind it, and this one definitely makes you think!

The book is for anyone who is a comic book fan, love the characters.I also like how the book points out the thin line between what distinguishes a hero from a villain.

This novel, I think, has a bit of a complicated structure, but I quite liked the interweaving between the current story, and flashbacks for context. It's kind of like having a few related stories happening at the same time that provide context to each other. For as many times as the story jumped around the timeline, I never felt lost or confused, which is a testament to the author's ability to keep the story coherent while also employing a very chaotic structure to the story.I think the story structure allowed the story to keep the pace right on track. Whenever I felt like too much was happening at once, the story always had an out to slow things down, and vice-versa. I also quite liked the dramatic irony, and how it affected the characters and their interactions. By the end of the story, the rivalry turned into a kind of cat-and-mouse game, that I quite liked.The only problem I can see is if you're expecting some grandiose, "the fate of the world hangs in the balance" kind of story. This story is small in scale, and very personal. And as long as that's what you're expecting, then this is a great book. But if you're expecting some kind of Avengers-esque storyline where there's huge-scale threats to the world or even the galaxy, then you're not going to find what you're looking for in Vicious. But, if you don't have a need for that kind of scale to be entertained, this book has got a lot to like about it.I suppose also, some people might not jive with the characters. I found them easy to empathize with, but sympathy was in short supply. I don't have a lot of love for the main leads, but I did like watching what the author was going to have them do next. I found them interesting, even if I really did not like them as people. But, I could easily see Victor especially being too much for some readers. The book does a good job of letting you know that the author is aware that these are bad people doing bad things, and you probably shouldn't feel much sympathy for them. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there's no reason to be invested in what they're doing.I was happy enough with how the book went that I ordered the sequel. If that's not an endorsement then I don't know what is. This may not be the greatest book ever written, but it's definitely, in my opinion, a cut above a lot of books I've read in my time.