Cbr16bingo Part 2
Part 2 of VE Schwab’s Villains series, Vengeful, picks up 5 years after the events of book 1, Vicious. As with the previous volume, the story line cuts back and forth from present day to the past, slowly teasing out the events that have formed the main characters and that are leading up to what promises to be an explosive showdown between factions of EOs (ExtraOrdinaries, i.e. those with super powers) and civilian authority, most notably the new and secret task force called EON, ExtraOrdinary Observation and Neutralization, meant to round up and incarcerate EOs. Schwab brings violence, gore, and torture back, and throws in child abuse and medical experimentation on humans to boot. It can be hard to read, but once again I found myself completely drawn in and fascinated by the story.
Vengeful opens with the introduction of a new character, Marcella Riggins, whose violent murder at her husband’s hands and whose subsequent revival leads to her terrifying and deadly superpower — the ability to ruin/destroy anything. Things (and people) melt, burn, turn to ash at her touch when she is angry. Marcella is not a good person, but her husband — a mob hitman — was worse, and Marcella’s desire for revenge, power and an acknowledgement of her intelligence is kind of understandable. Marcella’s story of acquiring power and gaining control over the entire city of Merit is what is happening in the “now” of the novel. But before that story can play out, Schwab must take the reader back through the past five years and the fates of the previous novel’s main characters, Victor Vale and Eli Cardale.
Most of characters from Vicious are back and busy. Eli, formerly a hero, is now in jail for murdering dozens of EOs, including Victor. Incarcerated at the EON compound, Eli is being subjected to grisly experiments by Dr. Haverty. Victor, thought dead, is free and with his “family,” Mitch (his former prison cellmate, computer hacker extraordinaire, and muscle) and Sydney, the teenaged EO with the ability to revive the dead. She revived Victor after Eli killed him but for some reason Victor’s powers are not exactly the same. His power — a sort of electrical force that can cause or absorb others’ pain — has gone wonky, and he experiences episodes reminiscent of seizures wherein he dies for minutes at time. And his condition is growing progressively worse. Victor, Syd and Mitch are on the road trying to see if they find an EO to heal Victor, but Victor, like Eli before him, starts killing EOs who cannot cure him. His fear is that these people will remember him (and Syd and Mitch) and that this will eventually blow their cover and lead to a manhunt. As it is, EON eventually discovers that someone is killing EOs, but their bigger concern is Marcella Riggins. Marcella has decided that she is one EO who will not hide who and what she is, and it seems no one has the power to stop her and her two sidekicks, June the shapeshifter and Jonathan the force field. EON Director Stell is under pressure to get results and finds himself reluctantly turning to the one person who knows what it takes to find and neutralize an EO — Eli Cardale.
Marcella, Victor and Eli are all terrifying EOs and the showdown involving all of the main characters is action packed and thrilling. I was on the edge of my seat at the end of this novel, both cringing and wanting to read on to find out what was going to happen. I do think it takes a real talent to write characters like these three, who are demonstrably horrible people, but for whom you can feel, at least sometimes, some understanding and even sort of root for them. Even Eli, who in my opinion is the absolute worst, gets a little pity. I also very much liked the side characters Schwab created for both novels. June, Mitch, Sydney and a character named Dom Rusher were all characters with tragic pasts and their own unique motivations for choosing their “side” in the stories.
Right now there are only 2 books in the Villains series but given the way Vengeful ended, I am hoping that Schwab will give readers a book 3 one of these days. I recommend the Villains series but it does contain quite a few triggers so beware.