“Did you know […] that when you take away a person’s fear of pain, you take away their fear of death? You make them, in their own eyes, immortal. Which of course they’re not, but what’s the saying? We are all immortal until proven otherwise?”

Victor and Eli not only are roommates at Lockland University they are best friends. They are ambitious, arrogant but also very talented. When Eli decides to prove that EO’s (people with extraordinary abilities) exist, things go south. Ten years later Eli is, from being Victors best friend, now his foe. Victor is in search for revenge while Eli wants nothing more than to eradicate every other extraordinary alive. But who will win this battle?

Vicious has been a book that I wanted to read for a very long time. And this didn’t disappoint one bit. On the one hand it was dark, eerie and mysterious, but at the same time it enclosed me with, calm and warm prose. There is something about the writing style from Schwab that just comforts. Next to that these characters were so real; they were complex with destructive tendencies. There was a blur between what was good and what was bad. It was a sort of exploration on what it means to be a hero or a villain, but not in a way that has been done and done. Because who was the real villain, Victor or Eli as both characters strived for their opponents doom.
In this non-linary thrilling story you form a real connection with the characters with all the time a sense of foreboding. I would highly recommend this to anyone who finds character development more important than action.