Book Review: WARCROSS by Marie Lu | Fourth Dimension Club

A must read futuristic thriller from Marie Lu for all Science fiction & young adult fans.

Author:

Marie Lu is an American young adult author. She is best known for the Legend trilogy, novels set in a dystopian and militarized future. The novels form the basis of a movie to be produced by Lionsgate.

Review:

In the future, everyone was immersed into virtual reality. More than 90% of the youth population spends most of their time on VR playing games, chatting and even shopping. But everyone were highly interested and addicted to one particular virtual reality game called Warcross. Warcross championship is the biggest event with a viewership of more than 200 million viewers.

Every locked door has a key. Every problem has a solution.

The story starts with Emika chen, a young bounty hunter chasing criminals for monetary rewards by handing over them to NYPD. Emika lives with her friend in a small flat while struggling to earn money and clear her credit dues. Occasional rewards from bounty hunting is not really helping her financially. Emi decides to make some quick cash by hacking into the Warcross game and stealing a valuable game power-up. Occasionally, some rare valuable power-ups emerge during Warcross games and they have a huge demand in black markets. The hacking backfires very badly by pulling Emika into the game and making her visible to everyone watching the game.

Everything's science fiction until someone makes it science fact.

Hideo Tanaka, created Warcross at the age of thirteen. Demand on virtual reality and Warcross games brought fortune to Hideo. In a short time, Hideo became one of the richest persons in the world. Hideo was impressed with Emika's hacking abilities and tries to invite her to his office, while emika was terrified by the sudden attention by almost everyone in the world towards her. She was petrified and switches off her mobile thinking that she might end up in jail. But Hideo just wants to offer her a job to find 'Zero' the culprit who is messing with the Warcross code. Finally, Emika understands the situation and accepts Hideo's job offer which can change her life forever. In order to find the Zero and keep the job confidential, she must participate in the competition. By entering into the Warcross game through wild card draft, Emi tracks and follows the culprit at the same time gets closer to Hideo and learns a lot about his personal life. Well, while Emi chasing and planning to catch Zero, we encounter a number of twists and changes in story plots.

What’s the point of freedom if you’re just living in a miserable reality?

Marie Lu narrates the story at a brisk phase and keeps the readers interested through out the book. The plot may be predictable in some places but overall story line keeps us grooved in. I came to know about this book after reading 'Ready Player One' and searching for more similar kind of books. Character development and the world building was very good and kept me engaging. Of course, enough romance to satisfy the young adult fans. The book ends with a promise that the story will continue. I recommend to grab this one and also explore other books from Marie Lu.

My Rating: 4/5