Warcross

Warcross is Marie Lu’s 2017 young adult science fiction novel, the first book in a duology that continues with Wildcard. The novel is set in a near future in which augmented reality technology has transformed daily life. Warcross is the most popular game in the world, an immersive virtual reality competition watched by hundreds of millions of viewers and hosted by Hideo Tanaka, the brilliant young Japanese American billionaire who invented the technology that made it possible.

Emika Chen is a teenage hacker and bounty hunter living in New York, surviving day to day by tracking down petty criminals for the police bounty system. Behind on her rent and desperate for money, Emika hacks into the opening ceremony of the Warcross International Championships and accidentally glitches herself into the game in front of the global audience. Instead of being arrested, she is contacted directly by Hideo Tanaka, who flies her to Tokyo to work for him as an undercover bounty hunter inside the Warcross games, looking for someone who is using the platform for far more dangerous purposes than the police can publicly acknowledge.

Marie Lu writes young adult fiction with a particular knack for high concept worldbuilding and quick character work. The Warcross technology and the global gaming culture she imagines are detailed enough to feel real without bogging down the plot. Emika is a strong protagonist, capable and morally serious without being a pure heroine type, and Hideo is more complicated than the wealthy genius savior figure he initially appears to be. The slow reveal of what Hideo has actually been doing with the technology he invented gives the novel its second half momentum and sets up the confrontation that the duology resolves in Wildcard.

For readers who enjoyed Lu’s earlier Legend trilogy or her Young Elites series, Warcross is a strong continuation of her work and an interesting move into more adult science fiction territory. For new readers, this is an accessible entry into one of the more inventive YA writers of the past decade.