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As with the first book, I found myself wishing that the book had been about someone else because Emika is just not an interesting character to me. This is actually even worse in this book - in the first one she is at least shown to be good at some stuff, whereas in this one she just spends the whole book relying on other people. Even at the climax of the book she does pretty much jackshit to help save the day. I think Tremaine would probably be the best choice, seeing as he's also involved in all of the action as a hunter, and his relationship with Roshan is really good. It's probably just a plot hole, but I am really intrigued by why he's still a hunter when he's super rich - he literally has no need for the bounty money and puts himself into danger unnecessarily. Also, he actually has an impact on the plot...
Speaking of the plot, this one is very convoluted. The first book has a couple of twists but is mostly a pretty linear story towards finding out who has hacked into the game and preventing them from doing evil stuff or whatever. In this one Emika bounces between different people - everytime someone tells her "you should work for us we're definitely good" she trusts them blindly and then is somehow shocked that they were using her for their own gain. Like, girl, this has already happened at least twice pull yourself together and start asking for receipts. In addition to that issue, the whole climax of the book makes very little sense.
Spoiler
They use the NeuroLink to... hack into someone's brain?? Did Lu forget that this is sci-fi and not fantasy?? I just kept wondering who spent the time to code this whole world that they're wandering around in. And she said that Zero was setting traps for them but, like.... it's his brain? He's in control of all of it? Why didn't he just kick them out??So, yeah, it was pretty underwhelming. I've got the same positives as before - good representation and the background characters are pretty interesting - but it just isn't enough to make up for the fact that I disliked the whole plot.
Oh also:
Spoiler
I really wish Hideo had actually just been a bad guy. It could've been a way better story imo if he had been manipulating her into falling in love to get stuff out of her (especially as then she might have learnt her lesson about trusting people...). Also I just don't think a guy who implements a tool to control people's brains across the whole population and then abuses it for his own good needs a redemption or a love story. I know that this was probably written 50% as a fantasy of a billionaire falling in love with you but come on at least don't make the billionaire evil if that's your angle.
I loved Warcross. It took me somewhere I rarely go - into the world of virtual reality gaming and all the hype of the futuristic possibilities that come with it. But I will say that I'm SO glad this is a duology and that it's over, because the way this ended and the twisted, slogging path it took to get there, has relieved me the burden of attempting to read another book in this series.
Taking the story at face value, it was a bit contrived. The plot twists were good, and the development of the few new characters was satisfactory for the storyline, but I was so disappointed in Emika. She just didn't have that fire that she had in the first book. She was constantly making excuses, almost waiting to be rescued, and I didn't understand her unwillingness to just admit her love for Hideo despite his nefarious goals. I didn't want "damsel in distress" I wanted kick-ass heroine. (More like Jax I suppose.) And then ... the way things all wrapped up in the end, pretty little bows, court proceedings and sentences that gave no real punishment for deeds done, my my - the future looks so bright for Emika Chen though. Ugh!
The one constant in this whole story was the Phoenix Riders. They never let me down and their side-stories were also interesting.
I guess the hardest part about this book was the pacing. I felt like I was forcing myself to pick up this book and keep going until I got to the last 100 pages. The lack of the warcross game itself was noticeably absent, maybe LU thought the ending sequence to finding Sasuke was game-like enough, unfortunately it missed the mark for me. So if you want conclusions, read it, you might even enjoy it, but I won't be adding it to my shelves.
