Vicious by V.E. Schwab offers up a clever take on superheroes, making superhuman abilities more accessible once two college students learn how to crack the code on becoming "Extra-ordinary" or EOs. There is plenty to love about the concept, even if the catalyst feels a bit borrowed from the film Flatliners or novel Pet Sematary.

The read is a fast-paced page-turner, and Schwab does such a tremendous job at toggling between different timelines to create even more tension. Even aside from the superhuman (no heroes here) powers, Vicious is a well-crafted story about ambition, jealousy, betrayal, and — most of all — revenge. As such, it's easy to see why so many people fell in love with it.

I enjoyed it, enough so that someday I might even pick up the sequel even if I'm not in a rush. Where Vicious fell a bit short for me is in the character development. Neither archenemy faces any real transition, and worse, sometimes the superhuman ability acquisition side effect — moral ambiguity — feels more like a crutch to keep certain emotions, like empathy or remorse, out of it.

In a nutshell, our two primary characters aren't just superhuman. They are super sociopaths. Sure, some might argue super psychopaths because they are cunning and calculating. Still, I lean toward diagnosing them (and many of the supporting characters) as sociopaths because they don't hide their lack of conscience very well. It makes the whole of the book a bit emotionless, except for hatred for each other and mere humans in general.

Don't get me wrong. This dark superhero sans spandex story is very entertaining. It's just that the characters who find themselves slugging it out in Vicious don't have the mental capacity to explore the gravity of their decisions as many of their genre predecessors do. Batman and Spiderman, for example, have more depth and they probably shouldn't.