Warcross by Marie Lu (2017)

As a new adult out of the foster system, Emika doesn’t have much going for her. She’s barely making ends meet, her rent just went up, and her job as a bounty hunter is unreliable. Her talents lie in Warcross, a game of augmented reality that has taken the world by storm. Everyone lives in the world of Warcross, especially during the time of the official games, where the top players compete in a series of games with as much press as the Olympics. On opening night during a risky hack, Emika accidentally transports herself into the games. Instead of the creator of Warcross, Hideo, pressing charges, he challenges her to a bounty with a price she’ll never forget. She must act quick because the farther she goes the hunt the more risk is involved, including the lives of the players.

I was given a wonderful ARC of Warcross from my library which I appreciate so much. That being said, keep in mind that I didn’t read the “official” copy of the book and some details can change. I was a little hesitant to read Warcross for two reasons. One, I have mixed opinions on Marie Lu’s books. I enjoyed her trilogy The Young Elites but I didn’t like her Legend trilogy. Two, the premise of Warcross reminds me a lot of Ready Player One and while I liked that book, I didn’t want to read it again.

There is only one real similarity between the two books and it’s that they’re both really sci-fi heavy. With both, I had to read small sections at a time because there was so much information to process. There was coding and computer technology talk and then the added mystery level that came with Emika being a bounty hunter. The world was extremely complicated and, for the most part, understandable. A whole part of the book takes place in a state of augmented reality, except that the augmented reality is really actual reality. The minute a character put on game glasses, their whole world was transformed into vibrant colors and flying dragons.

Something I did have trouble with was the action scenes and overall pacing of the book (they go hand in hand). The official games are a big part of the storyline, yet the reader spends little amount of time inside the actual games. We read the first game and then two hundred pages later they’re in the tournament, yet there was no real tracking on how they got to the tournament or how many games they went through to get there. Then, the actual parts inside the games were hard to follow. There was a vast amount of action packed in those scenes that weren’t understandable and left me confused with how they won or lost.

Nevertheless, Warcross can absolutely be praised for the amount of diversity. Throughout the book, there were characters of color, characters with disabilities, characters that were LGBT+, and characters that came from different backgrounds and languages. This was also the first book I’ve read in months that had both main characters as people of color (Emika and Hideo). I appreciated the fact that Emika was super independent and showed talent in technology, especially since there has been an effort to get more women involved in the technology field in the real world. I also liked that she was cautious about her decisions. Hideo was a character that I liked simply because. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting about him: he played the arc of a mysterious boy with a tortured soul (which was just fine with me this one time). One thing that was cool about him, however, was the little twist that came with him toward the end. I did see it coming but it was still satisfying.

I would’ve liked if the romance between Emika and Hideo. In retrospect, it wasn’t that bad. It was fairly sweet, seeing Hideo shed off his hard layer. However, it was really annoying the Lu used the trope that I see a lot where the boy-can’t-find-anyone-but-this one-girl-just-completely-breaks-him-down. Emika also lost her cool characteristics when she was with Hideo and turned bland.

Still, I really enjoyed Warcross, especially the twist ending. Marie Lu has officially won me over and I can’t wait for the sequel which doesn’t even have a name yet.

4 Stars