Vicious: Dark but Not Particularly Subversive

The big thing in superhero films right now is apparently two generally heroic guys beating the crap out of each other because they’re too manly to communicate with words. This isn’t a trope that particularly appeals to me, but I am always on the lookout for a story that will successfully subvert it. So it was with a tentative heart that I picked up V.E. Schwab’s 2013 novel Vicious. And while the story does put an interesting spin on the superhero story, I still found myself somewhat disappointed.

Spoilers for the story after the jump!

Magical Mondays: A Darker Shade of Malevolent Magic

I’m constantly looking for new fantastical books to read and analyze for this column, and when one of my favorite authors recommended this book on her Tumblr, I took a look and thought, hey, this sounds like it could be really interesting. So off I went to the library to check it out. A Darker Shade of Magic, by V.E. Schwab, holds a complicated four worlds within its pages, stacked atop each other like a deck of cards. At the bottom of the worlds is a source of magic, and the closer the world is to the magic, the stronger the inhabitants of that world are. Yet despite this novel premise, the book falls short in several ways. Minor spoilers after the jump.