Warcross

It’s finally fully winter, my favourite season! The best way to read a book is next to the fireplace with some hot chocolate. It’s sooooo comforting, peaceful, and calm. Unlike the December pick. Warcross by Marie Lu is an action sci-fi novel.

It came out in 2017 and the sequel, Wildcard, came out the following year. Marie Lu has famously written The Young Elites series so maybe you are familiar with her from those fantasy novels. Warcross is more sci-fi than fantasy because the setting is our real world, with a focus on New York and Tokyo. The setting does however get virtual reality enhancements through special glasses worn by the population. So I guess now is a great time to tell you what the storyline looks like.

The main character, Emika Chen, is working as a bounty hunter for Hideo Tanaka, the creator of the NeuroLink glasses and the Warcross games, after she glitched into an opening ceremony. Someone is tampering with the games and Emika has to find them and stop their disruptive plans.

When tough decisions had to be made, she stood up for what was right.

As always, we are starting by reviewing the characters. Emika is ok. What I liked about her were her strong and unwavering morals. When tough decisions had to be made, she stood up for what was right. This shows she deserves to be called a heroine. She doesn’t get swayed by short lived friendships or relationships. In those situations, she also decides to act and prevent those bad decisions from happening. Double applause for her because a lot of other characters would have just chosen to remove themselves from the situations, but not try to prevent or stop evil plans from taking shape. I do recognize however, that this can be done to have some starting substance for the sequel, but still. Very honourable of her. The other positive element about her character is that she is fighting for visibility in women in coding. Considering this was published in 2017, it was inspirational to have this type of representation. Sadly, this is where the majority of her positive aspects stop. On the note of her coding, she is extraordinarily talented for an 18 year old and I find this unrealistic. While she is sort of interviewed by Hideo to see if she would make a great bounty hunter for him, he tells her “[i]t took my best engineers a week to do what you just did.” So you expect us to believe that A TEAM OF the best engineers on the planet were only able to spot this problematic code in a week’s time (best believe also working in over time) and she did it in a few minutes???? No please. I don’t doubt she is talented, but I would have believe this more if she had the night or 24 hours to solve this. And now, this is where her super intelligence contrasts with her emotional intuition. It’s no secret Emika and Hideo will be attracted to each other. But he becomes attached wayyyyy too early. At one point, Hideo’s right hand man, Kenn, tries to convince Emika to tell Hideo to play it safe after an accident. And Emika just plays dumb saying stuff, like why me? Why would he listen to me? She even admits to the reader she can feel Kenn’s frustration when she asks him why she has a better chance of convincing Hideo than Kenn does. Girl, it’s screaming in your face and you know it. I really didn’t like that about her because she was repressing her feelings and for what? Now moving on to Hideo, the man behind Warcross. He is also a super genius having created the glasses and game at 13. He refined them from there and turned Warcross into an internationally famous game with championships. I guess he has that in common with Emika, that they are both super talented coders. I think it’s very cool that he created the NeuroLink glasses and Warcross. It’s an interesting concept and the Games also add an acton element to the story. However, he did say some cringey lines like “Everything’s science fiction until someone makes it science fact.” Another common point with Emika, who constantly says “Every locked door has a key.” It’s really taking me back to the Inheritance Games from the June 2024 episode. But back to Hideo. I didn’t like that he got deeply attached to Emika so fast. While he is known to date around, he is also a very professional businessman and I believe him to have been too forward with Emika. Even she noticed this, by commenting quote “[o]ne second, he’s interrogating me. The next, he’s sending gifts.” He got flirty fast. At the post-opening ceremony party, he said to her quote “You look lovely tonight” and Emika tells us he said it quote “in a low voice, so that no one else hears.” That was definitely bold.

The novel does take on the question of morality and how much we are sacrificing living in this virtual reality instead of the real world.

Ok so I have talked enough about the main characters. The secondary ones are all great, honestly they have very complementary personalities and the cast of characters was diverse on all fronts. I have read some reviews about Wildcard, the second instalment to the series being very restrictive with these secondary characters’ role. Reviewers online have been saying we barely see Emika’s teammates from the Warcross Championships and I agree that it’s a disappointing omission.

Overall, this is a 3.5/5 stars. Very cool concept of having a virtual reality game and then being able to wear the glasses allowing you to continue living with that VR on top of your own world. Of course, the novel does take on the question of morality and how much we are sacrificing living in this virtual reality instead of the real world. Tokyo is also a great city to have as the setting because it really fits with the futuristic take of Warcross. The thing that gave it an extra 0.5 star for me was the modest sexual content. Nothing graphic which is always appreciated.

So this is where I leave to your holiday preparations! Take the time to be with family and friends, but make sure to take some time for yourself as well to do something you like. Even if it’s not reading, may it bring you joy. Thank you for spending your time here with me, I look forward to seeing you in the new year! Happy holidays from the Exploring Reader, and don’t forget to keep exploring those pages!