Marie Lu: Wildcard (Warcross #2)

by - 11:43 am


Emika Chen barely made it out of the Warcross Championships alive. Now that she knows the truth behind Hideo's new NeuroLink algorithm, she can no longer trust the one person she's always looked up to, who she once thought was on her side.
Determined to put a stop to Hideo's grim plans, Emika and the Phoenix Riders band together, only to find a new threat lurking on the neon-lit streets of Tokyo. Someone's put a bounty on Emika's head, and her sole chance for survival lies with Zero and the Blackcoats, his ruthless crew. But Emika soon learns that Zero isn't all that he seems--and his protection comes at a price.
Caught in a web of betrayal, with the future of free will at risk, just how far will Emika go to take down the man she loves?



Lara|★★★★☆


“Everything became amazing; then, everything turned awful. Life is always like that - you don't know when you'll suddenly claw your way out of your circumstances, or when you'll go crashing back down into them.” 


After reading Warcross couple of weeks ago I was really excited for the release of Wildcard, and I was not disappointed. Plot and the story itself took a bit different path than I expected them to, but I still enjoyed this amazing book full of surprises and plot twists.


Plot picks up right where ended. Emika knows everything about Hideo’s plan to control entire human race with NeuroLink lenses and decides she wants to stop him. But people who are far more dangerous also want to get their hands on Hideo’s algorithm. While blurry past of Tanaka family is slowly unravelling, Emika needs to keep her head cool and learn to differ ally from enemy in order to survive.

I liked this book a lot, but I still don’t know how to rate it. While I liked some things that were different from Warcross, those things were also something I missed. Probably sounds confusing, but those who read book will notice the course of the story itself as well as insight in some characters has changed a lot. For me that is a good thing, to see other sides of the story and meet more amazing characters. But on the other hand, characters I fell in love with were kind of sided and there wasn’t any Warcross-ing at all (which is shame because scenes where characters played it were usually my favorite).Plot was little less focused on Warcross and even Emika’s programming and hacking. Wildcard was more focused on Hideo and Sasuke’s past and relationships. I always like a good plot twist and uncovering of the story- which is exactly what this book has given us. There is a lot of plot twists and characters wrestling with their pasts and mistakes, but the plot itself is really slow-paced. There isn’t any kind of action until, like, 60% of the book. It is just my personal feeling, but I find it would be much more dynamic and interesting if Lu inserted a few Warcross games in that introductory part.


“Every problem has a solution. But after every solution, there's a new problem to tackle, some new challenge to take on.” 


Despite the slowness of the plot this book was so easy to read. Marie Lu’s writing style is one of the best things ever to exist. Narrative and dialogues flow so naturally and even when the plot itself is boring and undynamic it is just so simple to continue and read without stopping for hours. Descriptions of Tokyo and technology is detailed and picturesquely, with no place for confusion. Everything is described in such a simple, but still understandable way that I could picture every single place and situation Lu was writing.

I really liked the characters part. There were some new characters introduced, like Jax, and other characters were thoroughly developed. Jax and Sasuke’s story was amazing, and, even though their story wasn’t told from their perspective, it felt like they were main characters in the story.
I liked Emika, but she was a bit bland. Plain. I missed Warcross Emika with her hacking and kicking everyone’s asses in Warcross. There wasn’t much she has done for the first 70% of the book except being everyone’s pawn. Only in the last few chapters, that were really intense and full of action, did she start taking matters in her own hands (tbh that was the only part where I remembered why I loved her so much). Except for that last part, she was more like an observer in the story and I felt like it could have been told from anyone’s perspective (Jax’s maybe…).

“That's the difference between the real and the virtual. Reality is where you can lose the ones you love. Reality is the place where you can feel the cracks in your heart.” 

I specifically like these series because it is a duology. I don’t know many YA series that are duologies and I always like reading them. Ending was bitter-sweet, well, maybe more sweet than bitter, but I felt really emotional because even though I read Warcross recently it felt like an astonishing journey.

I would definitely recommend these books to all science fiction and video games enthusiasts. First book is definitely a 5 star read and there are a lot of different opinions on Wildcard, but I personally loved it. They’re short, easy to read and worth spending your time enjoying them.



Having finished Warcross about a month before Wildcardwas set to come out, I was pretty hyped about its release and couldn’t wait to finally get my hands on it. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical at first, especially after seeing many negative reviews from some of my favourite Goodreads reviewers, but as soon as I started reading I realized that I needn’t have worried- I was definitely far from disappointed.

I see where all the negative reviews are coming from though. Wildcard was in some aspects quite different than Warcross and whether one would like it or not really depends on what was it they liked about Warcross in the first place. For me I guess it just hit the spot.


“We fight for survival with everything we’ve got, as if the oxygen mask and the seat belt and avoidance of a square of chocolate cake might be the thing that saves us. That’s the difference between the real and the virtual. Reality is where you can lose the ones you love. Reality is the place where you can feel the cracks in your heart.”


Lina|★★★★★

The action kicks off shortly after where Warcross ended, *Warcross spoilers!* with Emika and the Phoenix Riders trying to find a way to stop Hideo’s algorithm and a rematch of the final game being held. She is contacted by Zero and the mysterious Blackcoats, who claim to have the same goals at stopping Hideo. But the deeper Emika digs, the more she realizes nothing is as it seems, and she can trust no one, maybe not even herself.

Unlike Warcross, Wildcard was somewhat less centered around Emika, despite still being told from her point of view. She is still the one gathering clues and pursuing the truth, but we see much less of both her bounty hunting and hacking skills and, as some of the other reviewers mentioned as well, sometimes it felt as if literally anyone could’ve been the narrator instead without it having much of a consequence to the way things played out. While I partly agree, I can’t say that I minded it at all. I’m sick and tired of “special snowflakes” and “the chosen ones” in YA novels, protagonists who are “the only one who could [do a certain thing]” (sure, that worked in some books, but that doesn’t mean that it should happen in every single book). I found it refreshing that Emika was just a girl who found herself in an unexpected situation and then tried to do her best to fix things. She wasn’t perfect, sometimes she acted stupidly and made mistakes, but ultimately she was human.

“I’m walking a tightrope between Hideo and Zero, the algorithm and the Blackcoats. And I have to be very careful not to slip.”

While most of the old characters made an appearance (mainly, the Phoenix Riders), some new characters have been introduced as well. My favourite by far were Zero and Jax- each of them was well developed on their own, Zero as an enigma and a mix of the person he could have been and what others made him become, and Jax as a badass assassin with an agenda on her own. (Trying not to spoil anything.) Zero’s backstory and his relationship with Jax made my heart break multiple times and left me a mushy emotional mess afterwards.

“The girl he’d once loved, the one he’d given up his freedom to protect.”

As for the Riders, I was happy to see that they still played a pretty important role in this book and that we got to find out more about them, although there are still some things I would like to know about them.

The plot was a bit slower paced though, and there were less action scenes throughout the book since the better part of it was dedicated to uncovering Zero’s past and Emika balancing between Hideo and the Blackcoats, but the ending was worth the wait. Marie Lu really knows how to write action scenes and in the last quarter I simply couldn't make myself to put the book down.

Since this is the last book in this duology, the ending felt, well, final. I was really sorry when I realised there will be no more works in this series, but the more I think about it the more I realize everything has already been said and to add another book would probably just ruin an otherwise amazing series. I do at least hope for an epilogue-ish novella someday, maybe even something to aknowledge the connection between Asher and Day from the Legend Series.


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