Warcross - book club discussion (everyone welcome!)

[ufcasey]

Welcome to the seventh book club discussion of 2018! Everyone is welcome to join in at any time

This month's pick was Warcross by Marie Lu

A main character re-cap for those who read this book a while ago (like myself):
Emika Chen: heroine, hacker
Hideo Tanaka: Warcross creator and CEO, brother to Sasuke
Sasuke Tanaka: Brother of Hideo, kidnapped
Zero: the hacker Emika was hired to catch, could be anyone in the Warcross games potentially

Just to help get you thinking, if you have a hard time figuring out what you want to say, there are some questions below that I found online. You definitely don't have to answer any of them!

Things to potentially consider:

1. Overall thoughts about the twist ending (Did you predict Zero’s identity being Sasuke? Did you see Hideo using Warcross to control the world's population?)
2. How do you feel about Hideo’s actions at the end of the book? Do you still like him as a character?
3. What are your thoughts on Emika and Hideo’s relationship?
4. How did you feel about the gaming aspect of the story? How does it compare to other books, like Ready Player One?
5. What was your favorite part of the story? What would you change if you could?

[ufcasey]

Tagging people who might have read this book:
rainbowchip, rootbeerfloat, travella, shananagins, wesleycrusher

[wesleycrusher]

Thanks for the tag. I'm not going to read the first post because I'm only half way through the book and don't want to spoil it. I'm having a really hard time getting through it, I'll pick it up and read a few chapters then put it down. I'm not invested in the character and I feel like similar type of plots have been done better, the only difference being this is a female lead, written by a female author. So I WANT to like it for that reason, but I just can't get into it.

I'll try to finish it tonight.

[ufcasey]

So I only thought this book was just ok. Emika irritated me because she was paranoid for most of the book, constantly wondering about people's motives and if she was being watched. The technology stuff seemed like a fun idea, but Ready Player One did it better in some ways and I felt like the actions inside the game didn't translate well from the author's mind into words in this book, but if this was made into a movie it would be fun and more engaging to watch. My favorite part of the book was the backstory of Hideo and the day his brother went missing, it was a really strong emotional scene and felt this most real in a book full of unreal videogaming. But then the end of the book just seemed out of nowhere, didn't make sense, and I didn't like it. It almost felt like the author decided to make this book into a series and then put this twist in to accomplish that. Why does everything in YA have to be a series?! I won't be reading the next book, I just wasn't invested enough in any of it.

[travella]

I couldn't really get into this book, but I felt it was an ok book for YA. It's rare for me to like YA books. My biggest problem was the lack of character development. I just couldn't get myself to care about the characters. I did find the idea about the electronics and control interesting, but that was about it.

I knew who Zero was from practically the beginning so I didn't really see that as a twist and I didn't care for the ending. I won't be continuing with this series.

[rainbowchip]

I guessed that Zero would be Hideo's brother, but I thought he was definitely the "bad guy". Like it would be revealed that Hideo lied in some way about the kidnapping and Sasuke blamed him so he was trying to sabotage Hideo.
I feel for Hideo and I think is motives are well intentioned but you just can't do that! Taking away people's free will never ends well.
I really liked this book right up until the end. And I agree that the twist felt forced. Ready Player One is still a better gaming book in my opinion probably because it is a stand alone so the story can be wrapped up.
I also didn't understand the game itself very well. And what each role was exactly. I get it was sort of a virtual capture the flag but from there the actual strategy and execution didn't make sense to me.

[monkeyfeet]

I enjoyed this (haven’t read Ready Player One). I did not guess the plot twist though. I don’t understand why Sasuke didn’t reveal himself. Might Hideo change his mind if he knew his brother was ok. I plan to continue the series since book 2 is out in Sept, interested to learn more of what happened to assume between when he was kidnapped and became zero.

[ufcasey]

Jul 25, 2018 12:03:44 GMT -5 monkeyfeet said:

I enjoyed this (haven’t read Ready Player One). I did not guess the plot twist though. I don’t understand why Sasuke didn’t reveal himself. Might Hideo change his mind if he knew his brother was ok. I plan to continue the series since book 2 is out in Sept, interested to learn more of what happened to assume between when he was kidnapped and became zero.

When you read the sequel, Wildcard, please come back here and spoil it for me LOL! I want to know what happened to the brother. But I don't want to know badly enough to read it myself. I'm terrible.

[shananagins]

Thanks for the tag! I didn't love this book and I was bummed because I like her other books. The Legend series and the Batman origin story she did are both way better than this. The premise was like a watered down version of Ready Player One, which pissed me off because I don't like when YA books feel like they've been dumbed down for the teens. I also REALLY didn't like the romance between Emika and Hideo. Billionaire adult falls instantly and inexplicably in love with broke teenager is contrived and creepy.
I still recommend it to students because it is an interesting premise, and the action moves along quickly, and while I don't like the romance the kids do.
ufcasey, I agree it would make a good movie. The visuals would be really interesting.

If you haven't read the Legend series don't let this discourage you. It is really good.

[rainbowchip]

Jul 25, 2018 14:53:49 GMT -5 shananagins said:

I also REALLY didn't like the romance between Emika and Hideo. Billionaire adult falls instantly and inexplicably in love with broke teenager is contrived and creepy.

Wasn't she 18 and he was 20 or 21?

[minzy]

I also did not love the book. The contrast of Emika’s poverty with Hideo’s wealth seemed like it never would have worked in the long run, or even more than a few weeks. I didn’t care for the ethics of a relationship between him as an employer and her as an employee - the power seemed very unbalanced, not in her favor, and it seemed like it could compromise her work and/or status in the game. I also started wondering at the end if he was somehow using the Neurolink to manipulate/even create some of her feelings for him. I was under the impression the brother was dead, not kidnapped, so I did not see the twist of the brother being Zero. I also don’t get why he’d try to destroy Hideo since they seemed to be very close until the disappearance. Obviously setting the stage for the follow up, which I don’t see myself reading either (though I’ll read someone else’s summary!).

I got kind of exasperated all the number of times Emika went chasing after Ren and we still did not learn anything new that was big. Otherwise, Emika reminded me a little of Jazz from Artemis with the gritty independence, anybody else?

So, in all, not my favorite, but bonus points for a girl coding...

[rootbeerfloat]

This was meh for me. I didn't see the twist coming, which just seemed like a reason to have an unnecessary sequel.

I found Hideo bland as a love interest (though maybe he will be more intriguing as a villain?), but liked some of the other characters on her team. I understand his motivation, but don't agree with them.

Sometimes the description of the gaming wasn't real clear to me, but I imagined Olympic-level Fornite (which my son plays A LOT lol) with more defined roles. Ready Player One was better in this aspect. Also, I wasn't sure if this took place in modern day (vs the future, like RPO).

I guess my favorite aspect was that the heroine was clever and good at coding. I also appreciate that the main characters were diverse.

[abs]

My library hold didn’t come in on time for me to read this but after reading the reviews perhaps this is a good thing!! I really liked the Legend series but haven’t enjoyed anything else by this author.

[wesleycrusher]

I finished it. I agree with my original assessment that other books have done this type of premise better.

I guessed Hideo was up to no good from the time he was introduced- giving out the contacts out of the kindness of his heart. Please. (reminds me of the movie Kingsmen when they gave out the Sim cards) so I read the book with that in the back of my mind, though I didn't guess the identity of Zero.

[bex]

I mistimed my library holds so I haven't read this yet. Look for me to pop back here in hopefully a week or so.

[expectantsteelerfan]

I didn't enjoy this book at all and had to force myself to finish it. I agree with a lot of what others have said...Emika was mostly annoying, the game scenes didn't really come alive, and I had a hard time caring about anyone in the book. I did guess that somehow Hideo's brother would play a role in the ending and was expecting a twist, but I didn't really think he'd be Zero. I also questioned why he didn't reveal himself sooner or try to reconcile with Hideo beforehand since he was Hideo's whole motivation for what he was doing. I might be interested to hear if a 2nd book goes into detail about Sasuke's missing years, but not enough to read a whole additional book, just spoilers.

[mrspez07]

I enjoyed this book.
I hardly read YA and haven’t read ready player one.

I liked the author’s descriptive portrayal of the real and virtual worlds. I think that was the best part and it kept me reading (kind of reminded me of the great scene descriptions in Caraval). I also liked that it hinted at being in the near future with references to existing technology and classic pop culture. It made the possibility of this technology and story not just float in “the future”.
I didn’t really understand how everyday people played the game since so much was focused on the games everyone was watching instead.
Even though they were only 3 years apart, her idolizing him as a child and him as a super successful businessman gave their relationship a bit of a creepy vibe.

[bex]

HA I said I would pop back in a week and its over a month later. Oh well.

So I finally finished this book. It took me a while to read, I just couldn't get into it. I kept seeing the posts on here about putting down books and I was so tempted. Then it finally picked up for me in the last third of the book or so.

I just read Ready Player One in March so that was fresh in my head - and I thought that was so much better. Not just the plot, but the world building. I couldn't figure out what was going on in this world. Everyone just walks around with their glasses on all the time? how was she able to do things like see someone's level as they were walking around - were they wearing glasses? What was it like if you weren't wearing glasses? I felt that part wasn't well explained. In the beginning, she goes into the coffee shop and I get the impression she was NOT wearing the glasses, but she could see if people were public or private, what their level was, etc.

Also so....Warcross was just a game? A very popular game, but just a game? So in that respect it was very different from Ready Player One, where the system was part of life - how you went to school, how you hung out with people, etc.

I figured out Sasuke was Zero almost as soon as Hideo was telling her about the day he disappeared. There was just too much time spent on his disappearance, fairly far into the book, for him not to come back as an actual character, and Zero made sense.

I found the whole Zero plot kind of lame though. Like....he was trying to "disrupt the games" but we never knew his motivation until the very end. If Zero was that concerned about her, why wouldn't Zero clue her in as to what was actually going on, rather than be shocked that ~gasp~ she didn't understand what was happening??

I definitely got the vibe that she started out with this plot and idea, and figured it would be one book, and then decided at some point along the way to make it a multi-part story. I feel that is very common in YA - either the author decides their story HAS to be longer or the publisher pushes for a sequel etc. But a stand-alone book sometimes is just as good.

I thought the twist about what Hideo was doing was interesting, and I could understand it. I was with Emika there - I understood it, but didn't agree with it. But like expectantsteelerfan said - why didn't Zero reveal himself as his brother, if he wanted to stop it? If Sasuke was his motivation for everything, then it seems to me that Sasuke could have stopped it more efficiently as himself than as Zero.

so overall I thought the book was okay - predictable in many ways, but interesting in others. I didn't hate it , but I don't really feel compelled to read the sequel at all either.