Marie Lu is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling series The Young Elites, as well as the blockbuster bestselling Legend series. She graduated from the University of Southern California and jumped into the video game industry as an artist. Now a full-time writer, she spends her spare time reading, drawing, playing games, and getting stuck in traffic. She lives in Los Angeles, California, with one husband, one Chihuahua mix, and one Pembroke Welsh corgi. You can visit Marie at MarieLuBooks.com. You can find more of my reviews of Marie's books here.
The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down Warcross players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty-hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. To make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation. Convinced she's going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game's creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year's tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika's whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she's only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire. In this sci-fi thriller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu conjures an immersive, exhilarating world where choosing who to trust may be the biggest gamble of all.
The first thing I noticed about Warcross was how fully realized the world was. The game Warcross was described with vivid detail, and Lu never left out a single important fact while building this world. She is able to tell us what Emika's childhood looked like, while also building up her present conflict relating to this game. We were able to see the world with and without the NeuroLink connected. Even if there were elements of code or virtual reality that I didn't understand (because I simply just don't have a knowledge base in that), I never once felt disconnected from the reality of Emika's world, and what she wanted out of it. I especially liked that we got to see the evolution of Emika's world—from the streets of New York to the fanciest buildings in Tokyo, it was actually great to have the constant of Warcross to hold onto and unravel in the midst of all the change in Emika's life. A fantastic move on Lu's part.
I fell in love with Legend, and will always remember that as my introduction to morally gray characters. Lu really succeeds in writing those types of characters. Following Emika's journey from New York to Tokyo makes us sympathetic to her plight; from reminiscing and grieving about her dad, to finding a new family across the world, Emika is the heart of the story, and the way readers connect to this whole world. And yet, there's no way we can agree with everything she's done, or excuse all the choices she's made, even if her heart was in the right place. She's not a perfect person, and because of that, she's a perfect character. It's great that she's already written as complicated, because it allows us to focus on how she builds relationships with others, and how she tries to keep her hacker life separate from her team life as we grow more invested in the plot of this story.
And speaking of plot, Lu is a master weaver of those threads as well. Don't get me wrong, there were some things that were definitely predictable. As I always like to remember, if a body was not seen, then that character still exists somewhere. But there were also some parts of the book that were completely unexpected. The identity of the other hackers Hideo hired, for instance, threw me for a loop. There is another plot twist that threw me off, but I'm sure everyone can guess which that one was (and, if you can't because you haven't read the book, then read the book!). Either way, Lu is able to perfectly pace the novel in such a way that gets us really engaged with the world and the characters. Emika's story is compelling and fascinating, and we as a species do love the underdog. And then once Emika hits the ground running, we are ready for the story to become twistier and to be shocked by the things Emika uncovers.
The final plot twist of Hideo's intentions was incredible, to be honest. I knew that a different character was going to come back, and that the identity of someone else was going to be revealed, but it was Hideo's intentions that threw me, and I really loved that feeling of the unexpected plot twist. But what shocked me even further was the lack of ending at the end of the novel. Emika basically stands at the end as a huge question mark. This is a kind of move hardly seen, especially not in duologies, where readers will want a sort of "choice" or idea on where the next book will go. Because Emika doesn't make the choice of which person to help or support—or at least, she claims she's still on the fence in that last paragraph—readers are seriously left suspended on this cliffhanger. I really can't imagine what it must have been like to read this as it was published—I think the waiting to figure out how the story ended would have been torture!
I ordered the sequel before I even finished the first book because I knew I would need to see exactly how this story ended. And after that cliffhanger, I'm sure glad I did. Stay tuned for my review of Wildcard!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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