I read Warcross last year when it first came out. You can read my review here. I reread it in anticipation of Wildcard coming out and I enjoyed it just as much this time around. Marie Lu has once again constructed a fascinating world with believable characters and a plot that will keep you wanting more. (In fact, can we please have some more of this series?)
I really like Emika. She is a great character. She has a strong sense of what is right and wrong, but she also has the sense that there are grey areas between those two. In the first book she really struggles with accepting how strong she is and that even strong people need help from their friends. She gets even closer to her teammates in the second book, and worries about how her actions will affect them and possibly get them into dangerous situations. This is a huge growth for her. I’m not sure she would have considered even trusting them enough to help her in the first book. We also learn a little bit more about some of her teammates back stories which was fun.
Marie Lu always writes flawed romances which can be a nice change from the typical tropes. Her relationships are never easy ones and Emiko and Hideo’s relationship is nothing if not flawed and difficult. I still like them together though.
I also liked the addition of a new character in the second book, Jax. She was great in the end, although I had my doubts about her during some tense scenes. Zero’s storyline also became interesting and he was someone who kept me guessing at what he was really up too.
The plot of both books is very convoluted and have a lot of twists, although most of the twists were a bit predictable. The second book starts off a bit slow, or at least it took me about half of the book to get invested in the story. Once we find out what really happened to Hideo’s brother though, things really became interesting and I found myself tearing through the book to see how it ends.
I really enjoyed the futuristic setting of this story and the fact that it takes place in Tokyo, except for when they are in the virtual world. I found the idea of the NeuroLink and what it could do fascinating and terrifying at the same time. I could totally see something like that being developed and used in the wrong ways.
Overall I really enjoyed this series, and would love to see more books set in this world. Maybe one about Tremaine and Roshan, my favorite secondary characters.
Have you read this series? What did you think?
Confessions of a Serial Reader 
One comment