The Villains series by V.E Schwab - Maybe There Are No Heroes Here…
- madgirlthoughts
- Aug 4
- 3 min read
PART I - VICIOUS
“Victor Vale was not a fucking sidekick.”
Aahh, my dear Ms Schwab.
We meet again.
Actually, we met on this particular journey in the summer of 2023, but since the third and final instalment of this series is in progress…
… Let’s dive in, shall we?
Vicious is the first title in what will (soon) be a trilogy that takes a twisted look at the idea of superheroes and the villains they face.
Or sometimes, the villains they become.
But how do we get there?
Victor Vale and Eli Cardale are brilliant.
No one who knows them can deny it, or the intertwined nature of their lives.
Exceptional? Yes.
Friends? Sort of.
Heroes? Well, they certainly think so.
After meeting in college, the sort-of friends and definite academic rivals embark on a project revolving around the origins of EO (ExtraOrdinary) abilities, and the people who develop them.
Two things happen in quick succession:
They discover that the root cause of EO powers developing is almost certainly the suffering of a near-death experience.
Both of them have been called extraordinary for so long… maybe they should have the powers to match.
Orchestrating their own near-death experiences to become truly EO, becomes an obsession for both young men.
But when one of those experiments goes horrifically wrong, both of their lives are forever changed.
And broken.
Victor ends up in prison with nothing but ten years to assess what led to his incarceration and plot what he’ll do to the one who put him there.
Eli - now going by the much catchier ‘Eli Evers’ - remains free, becoming a deeply committed and self-righteous vigilante.
The only thing that stays the same between the two men? Both are adamant that they were, are, and will always be in the right.
When Victor escapes from prison, his relentless quest for vengeance and justice will not only pull him back into the orbit of Eli Evers, but also a hacker who wouldn’t look out of place in an octagon, a girl forever trapped at ten years old, and her undead dog.
That is how we begin.
Vicious is, to me, like The Boys (Amazon Prime) and Mary Shelley had a particularly brutal-looking baby.
Power, corruption, justice and revenge. Are any of them worth the cost it might take to achieve them? Who decides those among us who are worthy of holding, wielding, or achieving them?
What happens when two men, a girl, and her zombie dog walk into a graveyard?
I could wax poetic about Schwab’s writing style all day, every day. The way she manages to bare a part of her soul in every creation and also reveal a part of yours is as addictive as it can be disturbing(ly beautiful).
One of the main things I’ve adored about every piece of her writing I’ve read so far is how masterfully she wields the idea of moral greyness.
Be it the characters, the world and the rules in which they live and live by, or even the stories themselves, Schwab doesn’t just blur the literary lines between concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ - she erases them.
And in the world of Vicious in particular, seeing different events from the various characters' perspectives and never quite getting the complete picture? It makes you, within the safety of your bed/chair/wherever you like to read, put your money where your mouth is in terms of your own convictions.
Everyone loves a bad boy, but just how dark are you willing to let that greyness go before enough is enough?
I am yet to come across one of V.E. Schwab’s books that I wouldn’t:
Die on a hill defending
Recommend to anyone and everyone with the stomach to face some of the rawest depictions of human nature.
Vicious is no different. It is harsh, brilliant, and unflinching in the way it will make you recoil at times.
In that way, I suppose the book is inextricable from the characters who lead it:
“Victor thinks he’s not a villain. Eli thinks he is a hero. They’re both wrong.”
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