by Ebba Karlsson
I can’t even properly describe how much I love Marie Lu’s books, and Warcross certainly didn’t disappoint. She is really good at making diverse and interesting characters, which I really appreciate. The world Marie Lu creates are deeply thought through and well done, it makes it hard to stop reading. Everything in the book is somehow playful and full of energy, I really wouldn’t mind to make a visit.
Warcross is a virtual reality game that is known over the entire planet, and it is time for the annual Warcross championships. Emika Chen is the main character of the story, and she has some debts she has to pay off within three days or else she and her roommate will be kicked out on the streets of New York. Emika is a skilled hacker and a Bounty Hunter, she catches the criminals the police don’t have time for to catch. However, during the opening ceremony of Warcross Emika sees an opportunity to make some fast money by stealing a rare power-up in the game. But as she hacks the game to get her fast money, she accidentally comes inside the actual game, visible for 500 million people.
Emika Chen is an Asian-American whose dad passed away when she was only 11 years old. Unfortunately, he had some gambling debts he left behind and Emika does not have an easy start in life. She ends up in New York with her roommate Kiera where she tries to survive on her Bounty Hunts.
What makes Warcross special is the game, Warcross, itself. It’s a virtual reality game that is so realistic you think it’s real. The technology behind it is a pair of glasses, the NeuroLinks, that you put on, and the rest does your brain. The game itself consists of two teams who will try to steal the other team’s Artifact, a kind of gem, and when one team has done so it’s game over. The inventor of the NeuroLinks and Warcross is Hideo Tanaka, one of my favourite characters. Hideo invented the NeuroLinks at the age of only 11 years, and ever since then the world has been obsessed with him and Warcross. Hideo comes originally from Japan but went to Oxford to study, and now he’s back in Tokyo and works on his NeuroLinks. He has a silver streak in his black hair, which I think is a beautiful and noticeable feature. Hideo is all about work, but sometimes he shows hints of emotion and I think he’s just a mystical and interesting character.
The message of the book can be different from how you felt while reading it, but I think it has some moral questions that it wants us to answer, for example if the intentions are good, would it still count as a crime and be punished? Warcross is the first book of an upcoming series, which means there will be more questions and answers further into the world of Warcross. I enjoyed the book a lot and would definitely recommend it to a friend or someone else, Warcross gets 4 out of 5 start, because I have to know what happens after the ending before I can decide to give it 5 out of 5 stars.