I love a good anti-hero, and in my opinion there is no better kind of story than a classic good versus evil, steeped in shades of moral grey. With this one, I was sold by the dark and intriguing premise. Roommates and rivals, Victor and Eli, test a dangerous theory, risking their lives to see if putting the human body in ultimate jeopardy can push it beyond human limits.
Super-powered individuals let down by their flawed human character is a tried and tested Hollywood formula, from X-Men to Chronicle and The Boys in which this formula is used with particular success.
Widen the field into horror, and even Carrie has a similar energy. Vicious falls down here, because it is predictable. Connivance is lost to contrivance, with the tensest moments of the novel lacking surprise, and any real sense of risk. At times the plot was so obvious that I began to wonder if this was deliberate. This is just logic. I found the tension off throughout the book, not only due to the heavy-handedness, but also because every time events geared towards excitement, the tension dipped in favour of a slow-paced flashback.
When all is said and done, the two hard, arrogant students we start out with are not far removed from the hardened adults we meet on the way. There was potential for such complexity, but Victor was, for the whole novel, a clever, mostly decent man, whose personality seemed to mostly centre on him wearing a black coat.
Why did you call your dog Dol, Vic? Because Dol is a measurement of pain. And then there is Eliβ¦ who starts out with a degree of depth, wrestling inner demons that Victor is eager to indulge, before performing an overnight transformation into a megalomaniac. One moment the guy says a quick prayer before his brush with death. The next, he believes he has a covenant with God. However, for all its flaws, this is a relatively readable book. It does not challenge, it does not bite, but it slips down, smooth and inoffensive β frothy, maybe, but sometimes this is all a reader wants.
