Warcross (Warcross #1)

Author: Marie Lu

Rating: 3/5

Eighteen-year-old Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter to make ends meet until she hacks into the Warcross tournament and gets hired by Hideo Tanaka, the creator of Warcross.

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

The book starts with Emika Chen hunting down this guy who’s got a bounty on his head. She stuns him and alerts the police but isn’t given money because another bounty-hunter had alerted the police before her. She’s upset but can’t do anything. She’s in debt because of her deceased father’s gambling problems and is about to get evicted from her flat which she shares with another girl (whose name I can’t remember). It’s the night of the Warcross international tournament. She tunes in like everyone else. Emika taught herself how to program while in foster care because she was inspired by Hideo Tanaka, the twenty-one-year-old billionaire creator of the NeuroLink and Warcross so she’s really good at hacking. She glitches into the game and steals a power-up. She’s immediately contacted by Hideo and flown to Tokyo from New York to take part in the tournament. Also, Hideo hires her as a bounty-hunter. Someone has been disrupting the levels (he shows her) and he wants her to find out who it is. She is taken to the Wardraft where random players, called Wild Cards who aren’t too well known, are selected for the teams. She’s the first pick, chosen by Asher, the captain of Phoenix Riders. The team has Hamilton “Hammie,” Roshan (a British-Indian guy) and DJ Ren (a French boy). They train together. Emika suspects Ren of working with Zero, the guy messing around with the levels.

The Phoenix Riders are selected as the first team to play in the tournament against the Demon Riders. The Architect of that team, Tremaine Blackbourne, has a thing against them. He used to play as a Phoneix Rider but switched over after the Phoenix Riders’ rank fell. He had a thing with Roshan as well but aren’t on amicable terms now. Emika pulls some cool moves and the Phoenix Riders win. There was an assassination attempt on Hideo but Emika warned him in time. The Phoenix Riders party afterwards to celebrate. Emika meets Hideo at his place because she suspects Ren and went to the Dark World and saw Zero. Emika and Hideo kiss and all that. He’s also got an adorable doggo :-). She goes back and skips training sometimes. She meets Hideo’s parents and they bathe in a spring. He tells her how his brother disappeared when he was nine and the brother seven. During one of the games, Zero approaches her and offers her a job. She rejects and the Phoenix Riders almost lose the game. He also steals her memories. At their house, the other Phoenix Riders are pretty annoyed with her. She doesn’t explain herself. She talks to Ren, sees Zero and then there’s a bomb. Emika wakes in a hospital room. Hammie and Roshan talk to her and offer her their help. Then Hideo comes and asks Emika to leave Tokyo. He pulls her out of the tournament so she can’t play in the finals. Emika ignores him and visits the Dark World to get some power-ups with the help of the other Phoenix Riders minus Ren. Tremaine also turns out to be a bounty-hunter for Hideo and gives her a Memory. During the final match, she switches into another user. She had discovered that the plan was to put viruses into the powerups so she uses her “Play God” powerup and wins the game. Zero is also in the game and they have a confrontation. He says she was a fool and that his aim was to stop Hideo. Emika talks to Hideo and learns that he wants to take the NeuroLink to the next level where it can control people and prevent them from committing crimes using the contact lenses. Hideo had given Emika those contact lenses as well. So she’s kinda stuck. She swears to stop him. She meets her teammates again and they learn, from looking at the recording of the finals, that Zero is Sasuke, Hideo’s brother. Sasuke messages Emika and says the offer still stands.

Plot and Pacing: This was another one of those YA books–completely predictable, a romance involved, featuring a pretty protagonist who’s incredibly talented but doesn’t know it. In fact, here’s a little note I wrote at the start of the book,

Okay, I think I know how this will end. Emika will end up with Hideo but there’ll be a love triangle between her, Hideo and that Zero guy. The Zero guy turns out to be the good guy, Emika switches sides, Hideo is defeated. Let’s see how close I am. 🙂

I was scarily accurate. I’m pretty sure the next book is going to end with Zero and Emika together because duh. The only really commendable thing about this book was the setting. I absolutely loved the setting. It takes place in Tokyo which is really a thing in itself. It’s always New York City which is THE CITY.  But this time, it was Tokyo! And I liked that.

Also, the Warcross game itself was pretty cool. It reminded me a lot of the whole Ender’s Game battleship game. And it gets weirder. Whenever I read a really good book, I fantasise about living a life like the characters. So after I read Ender’s Game, I liked pretending that I was the commander of Phoenix Army and in this book, Emika’s a part of the Phoenix Riders. So that was a bit of a funny coincidence for me.

Characters: I LOVED the diversity of the characters. Emika Chen is Asian which was nice. I didn’t mind that she was talented and smart. What I DID mind was how she was pretty as well. Like, it’s not fair! How can someone be both smart and attractive? I also found her backstory a bit much. Her mother left, her father died and he was an artist and all that. I don’t know, I just felt that Lu was adding too many things on top of each other to make the reader feel as sympathetic as possible towards Emika. I did like the bit about her taking revenge for the classmate of hers. One of her classmates’ nude pictures leaked and Emika gathered data on everyone and released it to the public. She got expelled because she confessed to the crime when the friend was accused. I liked her chivalry there.

My favourite characters were definitely Roshan, Hammie and Asher. I loved Roshan because British-Indians are the coolest people ever. They’ve got the accent and the Desi vibes and honestly, what more could anyone want? I also loved the dynamic he had with Tremaine. I’m so curious as to what happened and I hope that the two end up together in the second book. It’s obvious that Roshan still pines for Tremaine and Tremaine’s feelings aren’t altogether lost.

I liked Hammie because of her quickness and passion for the game and her teammates. She’s also a grandmaster or something (at chess) and I liked that she planned ten moves ahead. I’m not sure what her relationship with Asher is. Sometimes, it seems as though the two are dating, other times, it seems as though they have more of a sibling-type relationship. I liked Asher because, first, he had a disability and I love the representation there. Second, I liked his personality–his desire to be first, his cunning attitude–I loved it all.

Hideo Tanaka was incredibly attractive and waaay too perfect as well. For once, I’d like the love interest to be someone ugly and smart, or pretty and dumb. You can’t have both! Unless you’re REALLY lucky. And it seems as though everyone in YA just ends up being very lucky. I didn’t like his reveal. I get that his brother disappeared and all but wouldn’t it be better to develop technology that would comb through lands instead of crushing people’s individuality? I don’t know, it was a bit far-fetched for me.

Writing Style: The book was fast-paced and the writing was interesting to read, I’ll give it that. But some descriptions seemed to drag on and on which I wasn’t particularly fond of. Also, I liked that Emika had a smart mouth and wasn’t afraid to be sarcastic when responding to things. I just wish more of that had come in the narrative rather than just in dialogue.

Well, I’ve got one more book to go.