Review - Vengeful by VE Schwab

Design by Julia Lloyd

Vengeful
VE Schwab
Titan Books, 25 September 2018
HB, 575pp

I'm grateful to Titan for an advance copy of Vengeful.

I was really excited to get this book, as Vicious, to which it is the sequel, was the first book by VE Schwab that I read. I hoped to see more of that world and the characters in it - and here they are! So when it arrived I rearranged my reading plans, and sat up till late on Sunday to finish it.

Both Vicious and Vengeful revolve around humans who have acquired superpowers after dying and being revived, becoming "EOs" (for "Extraordinary").

Don't call them "superheroes" though. Most are far from heroic and many are pretty heartless killers.  (I should warn you that the body count here is impressive.) But at the same time, they are surprisingly sympathetic, their actions understandable, often motivated largely by survival, and their situation both lonely and frightening.

Central to this story are Victor Vale and Eli 'Ever' Cardale, the medical students who, in Vicious, found the secret of superpowers but later fell out, Eli taking it upon himself to hunt down other "EOs" (for "ExtraOrdinary") and Victor seeking to end Eli.

Accompanying Victor are his surrogate family. Dom can step outside time; Sydney can bring the dead back to life; Mitch isn't an EO but is far from ordinary - indeed, he's the emotional heart of the group Dol is a the dog, and there extraordinary to begin with. One way or another, Victor saved or collected them all and they have stuck with him . But it's an uneasy life, always on the move, being hunted.

And now, something is going wrong for Victor.

Those are all characters from Vicious. Schwab also widens the cast, bringing in Marcella, widow of a gang boss, who is able to destroy things (and people) with a mere touch; Jonathan (who can generate a protective shield) and June who can steal others' appearances. Marcella's bloody path through the upper echelons of the city of Merit provides a counterpoint to Victor's violent search for an answer to his troubles. Once you're accustomed to the gore (as you will be if you've just read Vicious) the trail of death is grimly fascinating. Marcella isn't subtle, and it's all bound to come to  a bad end, the only question being how bad, and when.

While this end draws on, Schwab also delves back, letting us see, especially, more of Eli's tragic earlier life, of how he became fixated on what is "normal" and what isn't. There is more explanation here than in Vicious, and I find myself more sympathetic to him than before. The way that Eli's background is sketched, and the relationships between Victor, Sydney and Mitch, are done very well, making all four seem especially real, especially human. In places it is almost unbearably sad.

This is a lengthy book and Schwab builds up the story steadily, showing not only her characters' earlier lives but also the more immediate build up to the "now". So we get a building tension as the date and time counts down in chapters whose headings show just how much time is left. The book does dart backwards and forwards on different timescales - days, weeks, years - but it's very deftly done and is never confusing, the very different personalities of the different characters ensuring that it's always clear (apart from the headings) where we are and who is involved.

The world in which Vale et al operate is also well realised. Schwab's meticulous descriptions recall the distinct alternate reality of classic superhero comics: the plausible but other-reality names of possible US cities (Capital City, Dresden, Halloway and of course Merit, where much of the action takes place, as in Vicious - with, like all the best stories, a destructive confrontation downtown to round things off); the importance of city, rather than national, concerns and politics (the main authority in Merit seems to be EON, the organisation set up to control the Eos); the landscape of freeways, motels and apartment buildings. It's a breath away from Gotham City, maybe a plane flight from Metropolis.

That sense of place, the reality of this world, meant that even where the action became incredible, I found myself accepting what was going on. The action and reaction here has its own weird logic, such that once things got into motion, everything made sense. I couldn't see exactly how it would fall out but the prospects for characters I'd come to like - even love - didn't look good so the conclusion was nailbiting. (I knew from Vicious that Schwab doesn't spare her characters - or her readers - and the special powers granted the former are as likely to make things more difficult as to help.)

It is, overall, an explosive read, a gripping and electrifying narrative from an author who can write blazing prose and knows how to really hold the reader's attention. Just an excellent book, make sure you don't miss it.