Warcross Review

The protagonist of Warcross by Marie Lu is an eighteen year old girl called Emika Chen who lives in a digitally obsessed world. She is only a couple days away from being evicted from her apartment. In her last desperate attempt to pay her rent, Emika hacks into the national tournament of Warcross; a virtual reality game that has spread all over the world. However, while she successfully hacks into the game, Emika is also glitched into the game and everyone in the world can see her, the rainbow-haired girl who is not supposed to be there. Emika is sure that she will be thrown into jail but instead, receives a call from Hideo Tanaka, the extremely wealthy creator of Warcross and offers her something she can't refuse: he'll give her a billion dollars to help him track down an enemy. However, not everything is what Emika thinks it will be. 

The characters in this book are quite complex and there is a lot we as readers don’t know about each of the characters. Additionally, they all develop and grow as the story continues, allowing the suspense and drama to increase as well. As Emika manages to find where she belongs, she also finds parts of her Emika didn’t know existed. I really liked how the author let us see how Emika also developed internally and how she made her choices throughout the story. 

I thought the plot and idea of this story was well thought out and it was a roller coaster of a lot of different emotions and everything fit together seamlessly. Marie Lu managed to make the book as clear as possible but still had a layer of obscurity overhanging the story. At one point of the story, I was so sure of what was going to happen at the end. However, the BIGGEST plot-twist happened and left the readers on a HUGE cliffhanger. In my opinion, I think the author wanted to surprise the readers quite a bit and she did a fantastic job leading up to it!

However, I thought the general story was a little cliche. Emika Chen was struggling and then she manages to land a job with the richest and handsome Hideo Tanaka and they fall in love. I felt as if this was a little overused; one person is poor and then they meet someone more comfortable and they magically fall in love. I also thought that Warcross was a little too similar to Ready Player One. While the characters are completely different, they both have a virtual reality game that everyone is obsessed with and both protagonists of the story are fighting against someone who wants to end this game. Although I love both books, the idea behind Warcross seemed to be based off of Ready Player One.

 Despite all of my dislikes of this story, I still enjoyed it! It was a good book that frustrated me greatly at the end (HUGE CLIFFHANGER) but the second book (which came out about a year ago), really ties everything up and finishes the series off with a great ending. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys science-fiction and romance. 
Sarah Guo

Comments

  1. IoannaSeptember 14, 2019 at 11:43 AM

    I have read Warcross, and I liked your summary. I agree that the book was a bit cliche and I think I liked Ready Player one better. And by the way, Tanaka gave Emika 10 million. Not a billion. Haha. It's ok though. Everyone makes mistakes. :) Anyway, you did a good job not revealing spoilers and reviewing it.

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  2. Olivia ThompsonSeptember 15, 2019 at 3:51 PM

    I've never heard of this book before, however you made it sound really interesting and I like how you presented your dislikes of the story in a way that still kept readers interested in the book. It's also nice that you are comparing it to another book because readers can see that if they liked Ready Player One they might be interested in this book as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Andrea_TorelliSeptember 21, 2019 at 4:36 PM

    After reading this review, I kind of want to read the book! I enjoyed seeing you provide both the positives and negatives of the book, presenting all of your plights with the book in a respectful manner. This was a really good review that provided a lot of information about the book without spoiling it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JohnOctober 13, 2019 at 6:54 PM

    I read Warcross, and it was one of my favorite books. Marie Lu is probably my favorite author. I agree that the complex characters, and story make it really good. I usually don't like a lot of the romantic aspects of books, but the way Marie Lu presented was great. I agree that the story was just a little bit cliche, but I'm fine with that. Great review!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Icicle (Nate)January 31, 2020 at 6:06 PM

    Ok I read Warcross somewhat recently, and I definitely thought it was similar to Ready Player One. However, I also thought it was inferior to RPO. The implementation of the game itself seemed a lot more smooth in RPO, because it had an easter egg that everyone was hunting for and the plot of the story follows this hunt. However, in Warcross, the game seems a lot more contrived and less integrated into the story. I also liked the plot twists of RPO better, but that's just personal preference. I definitely enjoyed reading Warcross though, and I think your review does a good job of pointing out the good and the bad parts.

    ReplyDelete
  6. NickMay 21, 2020 at 4:31 PM

    Great review! The short summary that didn't include spoilers and lets the reader become interested in the book without revealing parts of the story. The review section was well thought out and descriptive and provided the reader with good reasons they may or may not want to read it, but can also let them make their own decision.

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