In the clinical, rain-slicked streets of Merit City, the concept of a "hero" has long been discarded in favor of a more pragmatic and terrifying reality. The long-standing friction between Victor Vale and Eli Cardale has transcended a mere personal vendetta, evolving into a systemic examination of what happens when human ambition is fueled by the suspension of biological limits. The narrative continues to explore the fallout of the ExtraOrdinary (EO) phenomenon, where individuals gain supernatural abilities not through destiny or virtue, but through the sheer, stubborn will to survive a near-death experience.
The tension in the early chapters rests on the shifting power dynamics within a city that has become a graveyard of failed experiments and broken alliances. As new players emerge within the clandestine EO community, the original architects of this chaos find themselves grappling with the unintended consequences of their own creation. The story remains grounded in the psychological wreckage of its protagonists, focusing on the heavy toll that resurrection and power exact on the human psyche.
The setting of the Villains series operates on a rigorous set of metaphysical rules. To become an ExtraOrdinary, a person must experience a clinical death followed by a successful resuscitation, all while possessing an ironclad "will to live." The resulting power is rarely a generic gift; instead, it is a manifestation of the individual's final thoughts, regrets, or the specific trauma of their passing. This creates an atmosphere of "hard" speculative fiction where every ability has a logical, albeit dark, origin. The world-building emphasizes the isolation of these individuals, who are often hunted by the law or by one another, turning the urban landscape into a high-stakes chessboard of tactical positioning and biological anomalies.
The protagonist's journey is less about a "hero's arc" and more about the erosion of the self. Victor Vale begins this segment of the story not seeking redemption, but seeking stability in a body and mind that are increasingly taxed by the use of his abilities. The relationship dynamics are defined by a "found family" of outcasts who are bonded more by shared trauma and necessity than by traditional affection. There is a deep, burgeoning focus on the cost of loyalty in an environment where everyone is, by definition, a survivor of their own personal apocalypse. The friction between Victor and Sydney, in particular, highlights the struggle of maintaining a shred of humanity while being treated as a weapon.
The book continues to subvert the "Cape and Cowl" tropes common in contemporary media. Rather than a battle of Good vs. Evil, it presents a conflict of competing ideologies—nihilism versus fanaticism. By removing the moral compass usually inherent in superpower narratives, the story utilizes the "Dark Academia" trope to show how intellectual curiosity can spiral into ethical catastrophe. It replaces the "Chosen One" narrative with the "Accidental Survivor," suggesting that power doesn't reveal a person's inner hero, but rather amplifies their existing flaws and obsessions. The narrative avoids the trap of the "power-up" arc, instead treating each new ability as a burden that further separates the EO from the humanity they once possessed.
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Villains
7 books in catalog
A bargain made in the dark of night rarely ends with a soul intact. Whether following a woman forgotten by history across centuries or a traveler moving between four distinct parallel versions of London, these speculative narratives center on the high cost of ambition, the permanence of choice, and the heavy weight of being extraordinary. Victoria Elizabeth Schwab, publishing as V.E. Schwab for adult audiences and Victoria Schwab for children's and young adult fiction, has constructed an expansive body of work encompassing middle-grade, young adult, and adult fantasy novels. Her bibliography is anchored by a refusal to treat genre conventions as rigid constraints, instead using fantastical premises, dark magic, and liminal spaces to interrogate universal human experiences of loneliness, mortality, and identity.
With more than twenty books in print and frequent appearances at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, Schwab's narratives span standalone historical fantasies, dark antihero sagas, gothic fiction, and epic series. Her breakout adult novel Vicious, published in 2013, earned a place on the American Library Association's Reading List, while The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and was nominated for the 2020 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. From short stories like Warm Up to sprawling universes like the Shades of Magic series, her books invite readers into eerie, highly atmospheric worlds where every extraordinary power comes with a visceral sacrifice.
Born Victoria Elizabeth Schwab on July 7, 1987, to a British mother and an American father from California, she grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and spent her youth moving between California and the American South. This upbringing, combined with a persistent passion for travel and wanderlust, instilled an early fascination with place, cultural intersection, and alterity. Schwab pursued her undergraduate education at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating in 2009 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Book Design. She later continued her academic study at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on the study of monstrosity in medieval art. This scholarly research into how human societies historically conceptualize, depict, and demonize the figure of the monster provided the intellectual framework for much of her later speculative fiction.
Schwab entered the publishing world in 2011 with her debut young adult novel The Near Witch, published by Disney Hyperion, followed by The Archived in 2013 and The Unbound in 2014. Her transition into adult speculative fiction occurred in 2013 with the publication of Vicious, a dark fantasy that deconstructed traditional superhero tropes by focusing on two college roommates whose lethal academic rivalry leads to supernatural abilities and moral ruin. Originally, the author maintained a strict division between pen names, reserving Victoria Schwab for middle-grade and young adult releases—such as her Everyday Angel series (2014–2015) and her City of Ghosts middle-grade series—and reserving V.E. Schwab for adult fantasy. Over time, as her international readership expanded and thematic elements crossed age categories, her works consolidated under the V.E. Schwab brand for broader audience recognition.
Beyond her standalone novels and prose series, Schwab's career encompasses graphic novels, short fiction, and television production. She created and executive produced the supernatural teen drama series First Kill, based on her short story originally published in the 2020 anthology Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite. Her work is published across major houses including Tor Books, Scholastic, and Disney Hyperion, and she has been represented by literary agent Holly Root at Waxman Literary and film agent Jon Cassir at CAA. Dividing her time between Edinburgh, Scotland, and Denver, Colorado, Schwab continues to maintain an active writing schedule, frequenting historic European cities and participating in major literary events such as the 2025 National Book Festival, where her novel Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil was featured.
Schwab's writing style is noted for its mythic, atmospheric quality, prioritizing psychological depth, atmospheric dread, and character motivation over rigid hard magic systems. A signature thematic concept in her bibliography is the ExtraOrdinary—individuals who survive near-death experiences and return to life endowed with supernatural abilities shaped directly by their final, frantic thoughts before dying. This mechanic allows her stories to explore the subtle line separating heroes from villains, demonstrating how ambition, grief, and resentment can corrupt individuals when granted unearthly power. Rather than relying on escapist fantasy, her magic systems serve as metaphorical tools to examine the permanence of human choice and the emotional burdens borne by those who dare to seek extraordinary lives.
A central thematic pillar across Schwab's adult and young adult fiction is the profound dread of being forgotten and the isolation inherent in immortality or alterity. In The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, this is embodied in a French woman who bargains with a dark god for eternal life, only to be cursed with complete oblivion where no person can remember her once she leaves their sight. Similar motifs of loneliness and liminality appear throughout her work, whether in the parallel, magic-infused versions of London in A Darker Shade of Magic or the haunted physical boundaries explored in Gallant. Schwab frequently uses prose designed to plant seeds of doubt in the reader's mind, challenging conventional boundaries between reality and dark fantasy while underscoring that every desire carries an inescapable price.