AN AMBICIOUS LIST OF REASONS TO READ “VICIOUS” BY V.E. SCHWAB

I’m finally bringing y’all my vicious Review on this vicious book. C’mon, i’ve been wanting to do this for quite a long time. So here I am! I wrote this post three times, so I hope you like it xD. I wanted to bring you something different, so here goes my ambicious list of reasons to read this novel:

it’s wicked, twisted, vicious… and there are villains everywhere

The way I see it, Schwab isn't just the absolute queen of fantasy, but also the goddess of villains (and antiheroes, for that matter). I remember that I wrote the following words on my copy of this book: "Villains? Pfff, they don't truly exist," because that's what I think about this book. In my opinin, Vicious is probably the best supervillain novels you'll ever find. Period. It's dark, straight-to-the-point and AMBITIOUS. Now, if you're looking for an 100% Slytherin book, here it goes. I always recommend this one when people look for something of the sort. C'mon, if you share my love for dark and breath-taking tales that have several layers to peel off as you read along, then this is the book your hear wants xD.

it's a story about humanity

At its core, this is a tale that lies upon a story that we will all connect with. A story about humanity. A tale about what we label as 'good' and 'evil', about our diverse social paradigms, about those labels we unconsciously (and unconsciously) place on people... About human beings that make mistakes and allow themselves to be ambitious. Vicious feels like a play of two, calculating, young men who end up being superheroes with insatiable dreams, playing protagonists in their own stories and being the villains in the eyes of others. Schwab has created a story about the roles we asume in our lives and what we represent to the people around us.

Or at least that's what I see in this book, and I love to share it with you all. Vicious is my best example of the black-and-white in the world, of opposites and the most basic things we glance at and about the shades of grey that lay beneath those first impressions.

it's an ambitious book ABOUT ambition

That's basically my favourite sentence to describe that book... Just 7 words, people. Rarely do we find such ambitious characters in YA literature. Ambitious characters in books tend to be ambitious because (1) they're the villains, (2) they're gonna "turn good" in the end and become heroes OMG SUCH A PLOT-TWIST or (3) they're just ambitious because they're characters used to contrast with what humans should actually be like. And. That. Really. Does. Piss. Me. Off.

As I've said, though, Schwab's novel is about who we are in our own opinions and who we are for others. So you can guess that none of the three items above will actually pop up in Vicious. This is just a book about two young men who ALLOW THEMSELVES to be ambitious because there's nothing wrong with that. While they try to take control of the world, that is xD. They're just two, morally-grey characters. And. That's. Great.

it's narrated in a super interesting way!

Narrated in the form of time lapses between the present and the past, this story isn't given to us in chronological order. And I knoooowww what you're thinking. Probably something like, "Ugh, this is gonna be super confusing because that's how it is with these sort of books". BUT WORRY NOT! Once you get to know each character, this is the easiest thing on Earth to read, okay? I promise. Pinky promiseeeeeeeee. It's hard to write a messy book and Schwab did it in the most perfect way of them all. AND THEN IT'S JUST SO COOL!

vicious is born as a secret in the ambitious mind of a writer that was still a whisper in the whirlwind of the publishing industry

Many people don't know that The Near Witch was Victoria Schwab's first novel as she became famous for other books. Unfortunately, that first novel was cancelled a couple of months after it was released. Schwab wrote two other books afterwards, yet both of them lay low in the bookish world for a while. Instead of giving up and sitting down to see how her novels got out of print, she wrote another book. In secret. That book was Vicious, as you may guess. Without telling a soul, she wrote a tale about the same ambition that held her from giving up, something that was frowned upon in a man's world. And she wrote it FOR HERSELF. Not for an audience, not for an agent or for a publishers or for imaginary readers. But for herself. And that's how Vicious was born.

I like to think that the honesty we find in this novel also has its roots there. Nobody was there to watch Schwab's every move; nobody was there to judge, label and criticize, so she dressed her characters up in black and white coat in order to speak about the shades of grey that lay beneath.

c'mon, it's just a really hooking book

Romance, rivalries, brotherhood, science, death, college lifea... This book has it all. Together, these elements add up to an utterly hooking novel. Every chapter leaves you wanting for more as you unite the pieces of the puzzle Schwab poses for us. In Victoria's words: "I started to see it all differently, this time observing Victor and Eli and how they got to be achenemies, how Eli gets to be seen as the hero, automatically making Victor the villain. I wanted to explore what happens when we take out the meaning of those words. Who do you root for then?" AREN'T YOU ALREADY DYING TO READ IT?

vicious is a white slate for you to root for whoever you want to root for

Who's the hero? Who's the villain? Reading this novel is like devouring all the facts without a specific order in order to then think about who is whoe. If we have to examine it, this is a book where the hero doesn't act or behave like a hero and where the villain doesn't feel like the villain. Who is who? Eli? Victor? That's up for the reader to decide. I hope you all find out who that person is for you :)