Personal Rating
Warning: it contains spoilers.
The Warcross duology (Warcross and Wildcard) is a young adult fiction novel written by Marie Lu and nominated for several awards for Young Adult. It is reported that the book rights had been optioned for a TV adaptation by Made Up Stories and John Cameron.
It is about the story of Emika Chen, a bounty hunter tracked by Henka Games, a company owned and created by Hideo Tanaka, to join the Warcross tournament for a job opportunity. Her task is to spy and find who is hacking the Neuro-link, a pair of glasses that lead the user to the world of virtual reality by joining the Warcross Tournament under the Phoenix Riders team.
As the story goes, Emika starts to discover the hideous plan of Hideo, the man he loves (their romantic relationship developed during Warcross’s novel). He plans to use the updated version of NeuroLink to control its users from committing a crime. The mystery also unfolded about the hacker of the Warcross Tournament. He is the long-lost brother of Hideo, Sasuke hiding under the name of Zero. He plans to stop Hideo from using NeuroLink Algorithm updating. These leave the ending of the Warcross to ask if he is an ally or foe?
In Wildcard, Phoenix Riders band together again to plan how to stop Hideo from using the Neurolink Algorithm in his scheme before the closing ceremony of the Warcross Tournament. She discovers that someone put a bounty on her head from Dark World, and her chance of survival is joining Zero and the Blackcoat. However, she found out that Zero and his organization is not what it seems to be. The future of free lies on who she needs to trust and what action Emika can do to stop Hideo from his plans.
Exploring the Virtual Reality
One of the reasons why the Warcross novel is heart-pumping and gripping is the tournament itself. It provides its reader a colorful, magical, seamless, and intelligently descriptive narration of the battles in the Warcross Tournament. It encapsulates a thrill ride experience added with mystery and non-stop action, a great recipe to set your excitement in motion making these two novels unputdownable. Even though of NeuroLink and the game’s concept is similar to Ready Player One of Ernest Kline and story and the background are entirely different.
NeuroLink Heroine, Emika
Our heroine in this novel, Emika Chen, is an excellent character in this series. Her background story is convincing enough to support her throughout the whole series. Though there is some bearable cliche developing in her romantic relationship with Hideo, it is undeniable they are a perfect pair even though it is felt a bit shallow if you look on perspective.
Mystery Zero
Zero is an enigmatic character, similar to a virus. The virus is just there, sulking into the hidden path, and slowly and strategically destroys whatever it sees on sight. That is one of the components of a great cyberpunk villain. From Warcross and Wildcard, his agenda and scheme are unknown in which this book makes you read for more and ask for more. If the virtual environment of Warcross excites you in this novel, the antagonist, Zero, makes you puzzled and thrilled.
Phoenix Riders and overcoming Diversity
Praise the author for choosing diverse characters in the team of Emika Chen, the Phoenix Riders. The series provides no judgment to their character’s differences. This novel shows that teamwork and love are more significant than stereotyping. The insertion of Roshan and Tremaine’s romantic relationship, a member of the LGBT created a perfect balance to this novel to stay away a bit from the romance between Hideo and Emika. Asher, even though he is described a crippled in this novel, his leadership and relationship with Hammie prove more of him than being a paralyzed person. Ren is Yin in the Yin Yang of this novel. His character is a mystery make him hard to tell if he is an ally or enemy.
Neurolink and its comparison to the real Cyberspace
The peculiarity about the first installment of this novel is the inspiration of the author. The author is familiar with the basics of computer security and its component. In our reality’s World Wide Web, there is a Dark Web and Surface Web. As observed in this novel, the Dark World of Warcross resembles the Dark Web. If you did not know Dark Web, it is a hidden search engine that can only be open possibly by an onion browser such as TOR, and few people know how to operate on Dark Web. On Dark Web, we can transact illegal activities of any kind. Dark Web is similar to the Dark World in the world of NeuroLink in terms of functionality. The only difference is Dark World is still virtual. Meanwhile, the Surface Web can easily be accessed and apply our day-to-day searches and activities identical to NeuroLink’s normal function in this novel.
In Wildcard, the author digs deeper into the vulnerabilities and risks of Neurolink’s Cyberspace. It tackles different kinds of threats identical to our real computer cyberspace like social engineering, malware intrusion, viruses, botnets, denial of services, etc. She also provides us layman’s understanding of Gray hat and Black hat hackers. Finally, she also proves that the main threat to the cyberspace algorithm is always the human factor.
Verdict
Warcross series is a young adult novel that definitely can be enjoyed by everyone. There is a mystery, romance, and action that makes you hooked to this book series. Even though the series shares some plot holes, it is still engaging, amusing, and exciting to read. The romantic relationship between Emika and Hideo feels trite and shallow, but the eye-popping action and mystery carry this novel as a whole. If you are looking for an imaginative sci-fi novel with a puzzle-solving plot. This novel is for you.
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