Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

88 reviews

crocs's review

dark hopeful mysterious reflective relaxing tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

• spice : 1/5
• humour : 3.5/5
• emotional : 2/5
• characters: 4.25/5
• universe : 4.75/5
• setting : 4/5
• story : 5/5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Confinement, Cursing, Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, and Alcohol

Minor: Drug abuse and Drug use

devinjai6655's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This story is about two pre-Med students who decide to simulate near death experiences to get super powers. 10 years later, one is on a killing spree and the other is hunting him down with a ragtag group. That group includes our main character, Victor, who can control pain tolerance, his former cell mate (gigantic, and extremely good with computers), a tween girl they found on the side of the road with a bullet wound, and a stray dog. The found family trope is strong in this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Self harm, Torture, Forced institutionalization, Abandonment, and Alcohol

One character uses God to justify killing people that are similar to him.

There is a dog that dies twice but he is brought back to life both times.

sn8man's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Gun violence, Self harm, Violence, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Confinement and Drug use

egg_apologist's review

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Fascinating concept, interesting characters to go along with it, but not particularly well executed in my opinion. The book is clearly trying very hard to be a character-driven novel, but I am unconvinced that it succeeded. The chapters are so incredibly short, which has the fun and interesting effect of making the plot feel like a countdown toward the inevitable showdown of the two main characters—Victor and Eli. This made the book very fast-paced and delightfully suspenseful, but it also had the added effect of forcing the narration to cut down severely on both the descriptions of characters/settings AND the amount of dialogue present in each chapter, which resulted in the novel doing a lot of “telling” about the characters, rather than “showing.”

In order to keep the chapters short so that the novel could move the plot along quickly, we (the audience) get very few scenes showcasing what any of the characters (main- or side-) were like before they became ExtraOrdinary individuals (EOs, for short). For example, instead of showing us how close Victor and Eli used to be before their inevitable falling-out (something that would’ve enriched their personalities pre-EO life and fleshed out their characters a lot more), we are given only the shortest glimpse into their lives together in college. We’re shown barely anything at all of their lives before they both decided to become EOs. The flashback scenes pretty much jump straight into showing how those two became EOs, and then their subsequent falling-out in the aftermath. Therefore, we don’t really see much of what they were like together before they fell out with each other; the audience is forced to simply trust that (at least on some level) those two used be friends. Since we don’t get to see much of how close they used to be, their falling out with each other (and therefore their “showdown” that the plot is pushing us towards) doesn’t end up having the same emotional impact that it would’ve had if we’d truly witnessed how close they had been in the past. Not including enough scenes showcasing their backstories also ended up making all of the characters feel just a little bit flat overall.

It is also hinted at (but never outright confirmed) that

transforming into an EO might, perhaps, lessen a character’s empathy towards other humans. This had so much potential to be a fascinating bit of lore, but once again, the audience is given so few glimpses into what Victor, Eli, or any of the other EOs were like before they became EOs, so there simply isn’t enough data for the audience to make a hypothesis one way or another about whether or not this is supposed to be true, or if it’s actually a falsehood that certain characters simply choose to believe. What’s worse, the few-and-far-between glimpses that we are given of their lives before they were all EOs don’t show the characters as necessarily being all that different in their pre-EO lives as they are shown to be in their lives as EOs. Occasionally, certain characters will insist to us that the EOs are behaving differently (i.e., the narrative “tells” us that they are now different), but we are never shown any corroborating evidence (that is, we aren’t shown very many (if any) scenes of what they were like before), so we just have to choose whether or not we want to take those particular characters’ word for it.

It could very well be the case that this lack of evidence to corroborate those claims was actually intentional—maybe it was a sort of way to entice the audience to read the next book in the series so that they can find out whether that particular bit of speculation is true. But regardless of what the intention was, the effect was that, since the narrative had already done so much telling rather than showing when it came to the characters’ personalities and backstories anyway, this lore-drop just ended up feeling like yet another thing that the narrative chose to tell rather than show. 

To be honest, I feel bad giving this book such a low rating because I truly felt like it had so much potential. But I really do think that the choosing to prioritize creating suspense in the plot (i.e., choosing to keep all of the chapters incredibly short and fast-paced) over prioritizing fleshing out the characters’ backstories (i.e, writing longer chapters in order to “show” the audience more about the characters rather than just “telling”) is a HUGE mistake if the aim is to write a character-driven story. It would’ve been a genius move for a plot-driven narrative, but in a character-driven narrative, that decision only served to undermine the amount of time needed to write characters that are truly three-dimensional. This book was overall a little disappointing, but since it is the first in a series, I’m still willing to give the series as a whole the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, this issue of writing a character driven story that doesn’t actually quite succeed in fleshing out characters enough gets improved upon as the series continues.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Murder, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Addiction

Minor: Police brutality and War

madmadmaddymad's review

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I opened the book, and for the majority of the first chapter, thought I was reading a Frankenstein retelling. I’ll just say that it was actually kind of a fun ride to go into this book, fully blind. 

Really liked Victor, despite his sinister-ness. But boy am I’m sick of villains like Eli using “God” as their motivations. He’s my least favorite aspect of this book. 

The pace of the story was intense, high stakes, and also non-linear, (which I loved.) I’m definitely invested in picking up the second one! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Religious bigotry, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death, Death, Gore, and Gun violence

Minor: Confinement, Self harm, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

julzella's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Death, Gun violence, Self harm, and Blood

Moderate: Sexual assault, Suicide, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Chronic illness and Alcohol

cleot's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Schwab weaves a fascinating  and engaging narrative. It's not my favorite of her work because I struggle with getting as invested when most the characters are in their own ways unlikable but the plot is worth it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death, Genocide, Gore, Self harm, Torture, and Xenophobia

Minor: War

nesscoffeee's review against another edition

adventurous tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I thoroughly enjoyed this and wholly recommend it. Every coincidence - or fate - and every character's perspective enriched the story greatly. 
I loved Eli's and Victor's dynamic - wished the end would have been just a bit longer, to see more of them.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Religious bigotry

lanid's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Death, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal death, Confinement, Self harm, Torture, and Religious bigotry

sharkgirl45's review

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Gun violence, Self harm, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail