Warcross is a dystopian novel that goes down a virtual reality path like Ready Player One. Unlike Ready Player One, Warcross users wear these futuristic goggles from NeuroLink, which was created by a thirteen-year-old boy— Hideo. Warcross is a game that came with NeuroLink as an incentive and has evolved into people’s lives over the years. When eighteen-year-old Emika Chen hacks into the opening ceremony for the annual Warcross Championships, she catches the eye of now-twenty-one-year-old Hideo, who offers her a job as a spy to dig out the enemy he suspects is hiding as one of the competitors for the games. Emika is chosen to compete with a team and fights her way through the book in more ways than one, dreams building and shattering with her rises and falls. Yet while technology is an amazing resource, not everything is as it seems.
I loved Warcross. I don’t often find female Chinese/Taiwanese/Asian main characters in books so I was so excited when Emika (her name is kinda like mine, too!) was Chinese-American. I love Emika, her name, and her rainbow hair so much. If you like YA fiction, you should give Warcross a try.