On the Same Page | Vicious | V.E. Schwab

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

It’s time to talk about our second book, friends! And let me tell you something: It was a REALLY good one that featured a truckload of issues and topics for thought. VICIOUS is billed as superhero fiction, and sure that makes sense, but it’s easy to see while reading that these ExtraOrdinary folks, aka EOs, are not your typical Supermans or Magnetos.

However, quite like most superhero/villain canon, VICIOUS is rooted strongly in relationships: good ones, bad ones, seemingly insignificant ones that transform lives and people. In lieu of talking about the hero aspect of VICIOUS–which Brittany and Alyssa are doing differently and awesomely on their sites–I’m going to break VICIOUS down for you relationship by relationship (leaving out some of the REALLY small ones, unfortunately). So let’s get into it!

This relationship is the beginning of Eli and Victor’s journey as college students, and the beginning of their experiments to discover the origin of ExtraOrdinary people, or EOs, as part of their college theses. It’s clear always that Victor had a thing for Angie before Eli even transferred to Lockland University. Victor is intense and broody, but Angie–a bright, pretty, confident engineering student–smoothes just enough of his edges and appeals to his better emotions, which he so infrequently indulges. Nothing ever happens with them though so it’s kind of an unrequited/one-sided/just friends thing. So when Eli breezes in during their sophomore year and he and Angie are swept up together, it sows the seeds of Victor’s bitterness, jealousy, and malcontentedness. Every time Victor sees Eli and Angie together, he twinges a little on the inside. Angie brings out a better, brighter side of Eli, too, so when Angie plays a key devastating role in Victor’s emergence as an EO (Eli and Victor posit that EOs are made, not born, through Near Death Experiences, and their abilities come from their final thoughts before death), it sets the two boys on divergent paths and effectively ruins their friendship.

Sydney Clarke is a quiet, eerie young girl. Victor, after breaking out of prison, finds her on the side of the road and picks her up. Along with his prison buddy Mitch, Victor and Sydney form a league of sorts, and their relationship–very brother-sister–is one of the better opportunities we get in VICIOUS to see a different side of Victor. Vengeance is his motivator, but there are small instances throughout the story that show how capable Victor is of compassion and protectiveness. I mean, compared to most people, Victor isn’t necessarily compassionate or protective, but he often goes just a little bit out of his way to make Sydney safe. However, Sydney is a very special kind of EO and Victor often uses her to his advantage as well. Whatever his brotherly feelings towards Sydney, he never lets them cloud his purpose, and Sydney is young enough and malleable enough that she’ll do whatever he asks, out of trust and a child’s feeling of obligation to her elders. If there are more books after this one, their relationship will likely be taking a very different turn.

Serena Clarke, Sydney’s older sister, is quite possibly the most powerful EO in VICIOUS. Her closest competition is likely Sydney. Sydney and Serena are basically twins, even though Serena is years older. In their pre-EO life, Serena is a charismatic older sister whom Serena wants to emulate and please. Serena often gets her way, and Sydney is often caught up in her sister’s magnetism. So when their abilities come into the picture and Serena finds herself tangled up with Eli, their sisterly relationship becomes quite dark and dangerous, especially for Sydney. The truth is that there are very few close, positive relationships in VICIOUS. So many characters are codependent, perhaps none more so than these two girls. Despite her sister’s role in Sydney meeting up with Victor in the first place, it’s clear that Sydney still longs for their relationship from before. And it’s clear that Serena still feels some affection for her young sister.

One could argue that Eli is the villain of VICIOUS, but of course it’s not as black and white as that. His relationship with Serena is important to him and his mission to eradicate EOs, and Serena is really the only person in VICIOUS who has any power over him. He resents it and needs it in equal measure, although the scales gradually tip as the story progresses. By the time Eli meets Serena, he is deep into his new life of vigilantism, but she beguiles him. It’s obvious that Eli is using Serena, but her motives for him are less clear, although it’s possible she’s just trying to not die at his hand. She’s walking a tight rope with him. Eli is capable of cold-blooded murder and Serena needs to keep her wits about her around him. Whatever innocence there was in Eli’s relationship with Angie is totally absent here and it’s hard sometimes to tell which of them has the upper hand. Eli thinks it’s him, surely, but Victor’s observations of their relationship tell a different story.

Victor meets Mitch in prison and they form a bond that’s basically leader and follower. Mitch is like a tattooed hulk with big brains and a kind heart. He has a nice relationship with Sydney, even though we don’t see it very much. He’s also basically Victor’s muscle. They are loyal to each other and understand one another, even though Victor runs the show.  They are a healthier (this is all relative, by the way) version of Eli and Serena, except Mitch is not an EO, just a guy who looks like a criminal who always managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is one of the most important relationships in VICIOUS. Faith and morality are at the core of Eli and his actions. In college, Eli is the one who views being ExtraOrdinary as coming from a higher power. After Victor becomes and EO and Eli is left struggling with the aftermath, Eli spends time asking God for guidance and questioning his new abilities. Once Eli determines, through his own twisted logic, that if God didn’t want him to be an EO he would’ve let him die, he pretty quickly develops a God complex. Eli uses his faith as an explanation for his own abilities and for the inherent wrongness and evil of the abilities of other EOs. The double standard is lost on him. He arms himself with this morality and justifies his killings with it. Victor believes in the science of EOs, but Eli believes that he is the hero and that God has bestowed this responsibility on him. He takes it very seriously.

The truth about Eli’s methodical tracking down and killing of EOs is that he couldn’t do it as quickly as he does without the help of the police force in Merit, the setting of VICIOUS. In this world, the police are aware of the existence of EOs and have paired up with Eli to get rid of them. Eli uses their database to find the EOs and he has them believing in his actions to the point where he suffers no legal consequences for his actions. To Eli, EOs are not human and are, in fact, already something dead and other and so what he does isn’t murder. It’s correcting a moral error. The cops, though, don’t necessarily have Eli’s moral compass. But they do have contact with Serena, who plays a much more important role in Eli’s relationship with law enforcement than he realizes until it’s too late.

And so here we are. The relationship at the very core of VICIOUS and, friends, it is EFFED. UP. It’s hard to figure how they were even friends to begin with. They’re so different. Victor is dark and quiet and fiercely intelligent. Eli is handsome and charismatic and driven and also whip smart. They both have some troubling aspects in their personalities, but it is Victor who first comes up with the idea that the two should try to become EOs themselves. When Victor’s first attempt fails, he’s left to play second fiddle to Eli. There always seems to be this competition between them under the surface. Theirs is a relationship of push and pull, and they are always fighting each other to be the one on the offensive.I doubt that they could’ve come up with the method of creating EOs on their own, but once they get it down, nothing between them is the same. Eli is always arguing that God creates EOs and, eventually, that EOs are embodiments of the devil. Victor sees only the facts, the proofs, the physical evidence. Victor knows that EOs can be bad, like any person can, like he often is, but he has none of Eli’s religious fervor.

VICIOUS is many things, but it can be argued that it is foremost a religious tale about the nature of good and evil, and about the nature of faith perverted to justify the actions of a sociopath. Victor and Eli believe different things, but the bottom line is this: they are neither all good nor all bad, and it is this grayness that makes up the heart of VICIOUS.

Have you guys read Vicious by V.E. Schwab? If not, I recommend it MOST DEFINITELY.

Don’t forget to check out Brittany and Alyssa‘s posts for this month’s book!