Title: Warcross.
Author: Marie Lu.
Format: Audiobook.
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio.
Page count: 353.
Release day: September 12th 2017
Genre: YA science-fiction
Rating: 4 stars.
What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)
For the
millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life.
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 players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty hunting world is a
competitive one, and survival has not been easy. Needing 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.
My thoughts:
I’m so happy I finally listened to this! I was planning to do it for so long but I kept putting it off, afraid I wouldn’t like it. But I’m happy to say that I greatly enjoyed this!
This book listened so quickly, if that makes sense.. I listened on double speed, so the book took 6 hours, and I listened to this in two days I think 🙂 I just couldn’t put it down!
From the first chapter the story and the characters grabbed my attention! I really wanted to know where the story would take me.
We’re following Emika, a hacker, who hacks into one of the biggest Warcross games. She attracts the attention of the game’s creator, and he gives her a job offer. She will play in the tournament and spy for him.
In this story we get to know all these other players, but we also get to see a lot from this Warcross world. I loved how all the game world were so different from each other, but still really well explained. Besides this legal world, we also get to see the ‘dark’ side of Warcross. Which again is really nicely developed. It is really easy to see these worlds before you, even though she didn’t use that much words to describe. Probably because it is based on our world, with just a bit more technologies, so it feels really realistic, since this could be our world in some years! Maybe for this the audiobook really helped!
I would have liked a bit more interaction between Emika and the other players, we do get this at the end, but would have been nice if we got to know them a bit earlier.
The twist at the ending was not that unexpected to me, but it definitely made me really curious to the sequel!
If you enjoyed Ready Player One, you will definitely like this one as well. If you didn’t like Ready Player One you could still enjoy this, since this is still quite different. It does not contain as many 80’s references! I would definitely recommend the audiobook, because I think this made it easier to ‘imagine’ the warcross world.
‘Every locked door has a key. Every problem has a solution. ’
– Marie Lu