Books like V. E. Schwab

Harry repeatedly lives the same life, retaining every memory; when a message arrives that the future is ending faster each time, his unusual immortality becomes the basis for a long, cerebral confrontation.

Like Vicious, this John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner understands that the most compelling nemesis is also an intellectual equal: someone who recognizes you, fascinates you, and makes friendship nearly indistinguishable from warfare. North builds suspense through recursive chronology, withheld information, and tiny choices accumulating across lifetimes. The result is cooler in tone than Schwab’s novel but just as obsessed with power, exceptionalism, and the terrifying certainty that only you can stop the other man.

Baru’s homeland is absorbed by an empire that conquers through economics, education, and social engineering. Her answer is audacious: enter its service, master its machinery, and become powerful enough to break it from within.

Readers who admired Victor Vale’s weaponized intelligence will find Baru irresistible and appalling. She treats money, loyalty, and even intimacy as instruments, while Dickinson forces every ruthless calculation to carry an emotional cost. The novel’s formidable reputation among political-fantasy readers comes from this refusal to offer clean hands or easy rebellion. Its battles are often fought with ledgers and leverage, yet they feel viciously personal. Few novels make competence this thrilling—or ask so pitilessly what revenge turns its architect into.

Anna is a temporary office worker for supervillains until a celebrated hero leaves her badly injured as collateral damage. While recovering, she begins quantifying how much destruction supposedly noble heroes actually cause—and discovers that data can be a devastating weapon.

The superhero setting is familiar, but Walschots attacks it from Vicious’s favorite angle: who gets labeled heroic, who gets dismissed as monstrous, and how grievance hardens into purpose. Anna’s rise depends less on spectacle than on analysis, logistics, and an increasingly unnerving talent for finding pressure points. The black workplace comedy gradually sharpens into a revenge story with real bodily and moral consequences. If Victor’s meticulous spite was your favorite part of Vicious, Anna offers the rare pleasure of meeting someone who can make a spreadsheet feel like a loaded gun.