My Reaction in a Nutshell: 
 This book should come with the disclaimer: Kids, don't try this at home. 
 The Long Version: 
 Vicious is incredible. Words cannot describe how much I love it. Vicious is fantastic. The characters are amazing. The writing is wonderful. Overall it was one of the most fun books I've read this summer. My local library didn't have the book but had A Darker Shade of Magic instead. I had only read about 50 pages of ADSOM when I went to the store and knew that I had to buy Vicious since I loved Schwab's writing style so much. And this book did not disappoint. 
 I would love to write a literary analysis of Vicious. The characters are so complex and it calls into questions who is really the villain and who is the hero? 
 "The paper called Eli a hero. The word made Victor laugh. Not just because it was absurd, but because it posed a question. If Eli really was a hero, and Victor meant to stop him, did that make him a villain?" (page 91) It was so interesting to read things from Victor's perspective (see above) and the read things from Eli's point of view (see below). 
 "A hero. Wasn't he? Heroes saved the world from villains, from evil. Heroes sacrificed themselves to do it. Was he not bloodying his hands and his soul to set the world right?" (page 272) Vicious is told in two parts. Part One is told mostly in Victor's POV with a few scenes told from Sydney's POV. Part Two is told in a combination of Victor, Eli, Sydney, Serena, and Mitch's POV. The book jumps POV, time, and location pretty frequently. But Schwab manages to write it all in such a way that readers won't be confused. I loved reading from different perspectives and time periods. I loved every POV, but my personal favorites were Mitch and Serena' POVs. Readers don't get to hear from either often, but what glimpse readers were given really made the character's actions make sense and gave great depth to them. Both characters were important, but were shadowed by the two leads (Victor and Eli). 
 Victor is a man who is dead set on revenge. Eli is someone who believes God is telling him EO's need to be eliminated. And both are incredibly manipulative. Victor and Eli were well-written, had incredible depth, and Schwab did an excellent job of showing why each character acts the way he does. The events from ten years ago play a HUGE role in what happens during present time. What started off as a simple research project went terribly, terribly wrong. 
 I've been told that Schwab is known for writing "morally grey" characters (characters who are neither totally good nor totally evil) and she has certainly succeeded with Vicious. 
 "'There are no good men in this game,' said Mitch." (page 276) I read Vicious with fairly high expectations (especially after I devoured A Darker Shade of Magic) but I wasn't expecting to LOVE Vicious as much as I do. Maybe it is just because I adore the show Heroes and this book reminds me of it, or maybe it is simply because the book is fantastic. The only thing I wish was that this book had a sequel, because I'm not quite ready to part with the characters. 
 ***TRIGGER WARNINGS: suicide/self-harm (for science), torture, murder, death, mind control, drowning, shootings