Warcross by Marie LuMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In a near future where an online game called Warcross has millions of daily users, 18-year-old Emika Chen makes a living as a freelance bounty hunter to help the NYPD catch illegal gambling within the game. This barely pays the rent, so, in a get-in-get-out scheme, she hacks into the Warcross Championships for a quick payout. This doesn’t go as planned, but does make Emika an overnight sensation as the teen who glitched into the game. Instead of getting in trouble, Hideo Tanaka, the young billionaire creator of Warcross, hires her to help him prevent future glitches and security threats. Hideo flies Emika to Tokyo and hides her in plain sight as Warcross’ newest “professional” player, giving her access to game data and first hand knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes. The closer Emika gets to discovering the truth, the more she realizes this “threat” could be bigger than she is trained to handle - and could involve the teammates and employer she thought she could trust.
Warcross presents a familiar alternate reality, one where your online persona is just as important as who you are offline, and taking care to protect your identity is even more important. In this world, in-game risks have real world consequences. Emika, whose personal mantra is “Every locked door has a key” (p. 22), must balance her role as part of a gaming team with her “day job” of professional hacker. Can she trust her internationally ranked teammates, who see her as a fluke at best and a fraud at worst? Is Hideo’s mystery part of his reserved persona, or does he have something more to hide?
Emika shines with both vulnerability and humor, though her relationships with Hideo, her teammates, and her late father are what drive the tension and depth of this story. Warcross is a fast-paced mystery that plays out in an online arena as much as in the flashy and high tech Tokyo of the future, making it suitable for fans of Ready Player One or online games like League of Legends or Overwatch.
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