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.
This book was just one unfortunate circumstance after another for me.
First of all, I’ve noticed through reading and reviewing books for almost two years now that I don’t tend to like conflict in books. As in… any conflict. I know it’s important to the plot of the book, but I hate that downfall moment where the characters don’t believe in themselves and their situation. This book opens in a sort of “downfall” situation for the main character, where she’s struggling to pay her rent and everything is about to go horribly, terribly wrong.
It took me a lot longer than it should have to read the opening bit of this book. It was hard for me to push through it and get to the actual meat of the story because it was so depressing.
And then, the worst thing that could have happened to this book occurred: while looking in the back for the page count, my eyes happened to glance over a spoiler.
This was a world-ending spoiler. A massive spoiler that changed the entire way I viewed this book. While I found the book’s application of VR in the real world interesting, it was hard to care for the book with the knowledge I had accidentally obtained. I couldn’t look at the characters in the way the author had intended while I knew certain details of the ending, completely ruining the experience for me.
I’m sure a lot of people would like this book, and I can kind of see why. But I couldn’t connect to this book in the way I should have, so I must personally rate it quite low.
KiiitasticBooks 