Books like Vicious
Vicious by V.E. Schwab reads as dark, fast. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.
What Vicious is like to read
A gritty, comic-book-styled duel between two brilliant, arrogant men whose friendship curdled into obsession — morally gray on both sides, propelled by a decade-long grudge. Best for: readers who want antihero-vs-antihero superhero fiction with no clean rooting interest.
A Darker Shade of Magic
V.E. Schwab · 2015
A brisk portal-fantasy adventure across four parallel Londons, pairing a rare magician-smuggler with a scrappy cutpurse as a dangerous artifact drags them between worlds.
Gideon the Ninth
Tamsyn Muir · 2019
A gothic locked-house murder mystery smuggled inside a necromantic space-empire, narrated by a sword-swinging smartass whose crude memelord voice keeps colliding with genuine dread and slow-building devotion.
Cinder
Marissa Meyer · 2012
A brisk fairy-tale retelling with a cyborg mechanic heroine, palace intrigue, and a plague-ridden futuristic Beijing — plot-forward, romantic, and easy to devour in a sitting.
The Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin · 2015
An apocalyptic secondary-world fantasy that opens on a world-ending rift, a murdered child, and a land where the earth itself is a weapon — grim, high-stakes, and mythic in scope.
Six of Crows
Leigh Bardugo · 2015
A propulsive fantasy heist with a rotating crew of scarred, morally-gray teens whose banter and slow-burn romances carry as much weight as the impossible job itself.
Only Ashes Remain
Rebecca Schaeffer · 2019
A grim, blood-soaked continuation of Nita's fight for survival, forcing her deeper into predatory black markets and impossible choices to protect the people she loves.
The Kind Worth Killing
Peter Swanson · 2015
A chance airport confession spirals into a coolly plotted crime built on shifting allegiances and secrets held by every party.
Out
桐野夏生 · 2003
A grim, class-inflected crime novel in which four exhausted women cross an irreversible line together — the horror is domestic and economic before it is bloody.
The Sunlit Man
Brandon Sanderson · 2023
Same fantasy feel
Runaways
Brian K. Vaughan · 2004
A character-driven superhero origin story where six teens must redefine themselves against their parents' criminal legacy, balancing dark discovery with the warmth of chosen family.
The Hunter (aka Point Blank and Payback)
Donald E. Westlake · 1962
A cold, methodical revenge thriller following a double-crossed thief as he grinds his way through an organization that wronged him, told in Westlake's terse, unflinching prose.
The asphalt jungle
W. R. Burnett · 1949
Shares the heist + vspare thread
About Vicious — what the genome says
Is Vicious a complete story or a cliffhanger?
The main arc resolves, with wider series threads left open.
How scary is Vicious?
Mildly eerie — tension without real scares.
Who is Vicious for?
readers who want antihero-vs-antihero superhero fiction with no clean rooting interest
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