Warcross (Warcross, #1)

by Marie Lu

[Rinn]

Also reviewed at Paper & Pixels.

There’s no doubt about it – I’ll always pick up a book about video games. I love this merging of my two top hobbies, and sometimes it works out in my favour, for example Ready Player One or the .//hack manga series.

Warcross looked very promising. The story of a young hacker struggling with debt and facing life on the streets, who accidentally manages to glitch herself into a major competition of ‘Warcross’, the world’s favourite e-sport, when testing a new hack. Emika is instantly caught up in the world of competitive Warcross, where opposing teams have to capture each other’s ‘Artifacts’ to win, and her life is transformed. However, as often goes with rags to riches type stories, not everything is quite as it seems.

I felt like Warcross as a game was well set up, and easy to visualise for the reader. Online games such as MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas) are really big at the moment, so it was also very relevant. And like Ready Player One, the use of Virtual Reality meant that Marie Lu could write Emika as if she was doing all the actions herself, rather than just controlling a character.

This was an enjoyable novel, but as soon as there was a whiff of romance I began to lose interest in the book. The romance was too convenient and quick, and the ultimate plot twist at the end was incredibly predictable as a result. Apparently it is a series, but could probably have worked as a standalone novel too.

In a sentence: a fun idea for a novel involving a video game I would definitely play, but ultimately let down by the romance and predictable ending.