Vicious and Vengeful (Villains #1 and #2) by V. E. Schwab

Amy   

fantasy

Victor and Eli meet at college as roommates. Both are smart, ambitious, and competitive. However, when Eli decides to embark on an extreme and risky thesis about the controversial ExtraOrdinaries (OEs), people who are rumored to have extraordinary powers, their drive to succeed rises to dangerous recklessness. 

Told from various time periods between the present and ten years in the past (when Victor and Eli were in college), the reader eventually comes to fully understand what has happened. However, it was sort of confusing at the beginning and took me a while to get into the story. When I was finally given enough information to comprehend the basics of the past ten years, I began to enjoy it much more.

The premise is difficult to swallow but I did my best in order to enjoy the story. I’ve loved many of V. E. Schwab’s more recent novels which is why I decided to give this older one a try. As with her other novels, Vicious is populated with characters who have good and bad sides. The badness of Victor and Eli resulted in me not really loving either character, however. Some of the secondary characters were endearing. But the best part of this novel is the creativity of the story itself. It’s creepy and dark. I think I will give the sequel a try.

Amy  

fantasy

Picking up 5 years after Vicious ended, Vengeful looks back over the intervening years (out of sequence, as with the first novel). Eli is now in custody at an EO facility. Victor, Sydney, and Mitch are constantly moving while attempting to find a cure for Victor’s new post-revival predicament. The reader gets to know the main characters better and is introduced to a few new EOs. Schwab’s creativity is on full display with these EOs, which was a fun part of this novel. The action in this one makes for a more interesting story than Vicious. And, of course, there will be another novel in the series which I now want to read.

The audiobook narrator, Jeremy Arthur, was a good voice actor. However, his female voices weren’t great—especially the voice of young Sydney who is the most frequently speaking female character. He made her sound whiny in his attempt at a young voice. He did have a nice Irish accent which was important and a small repertoire of other voices. I’ll give him an A-.