“But sometimes, people kick you to the ground at recess because they think the shape of your eyes is funny. They lunge at you because they see a vulnerable body. Or a different skin color. Or a different name. Or a girl. They think that you won’t hit back – that you’ll just lower your eyes and hide. And sometimes, to protect yourself, to make it go away, you do.

But sometimes, you find yourself standing in exactly the right position, wielding exactly the right weapon to hit back.”

Warcross by Marie Lu takes us 10 years into the future. She wrote this book with the purpose of creating a world she can see happening. Although most things in this book are mere speculation of the future, she manages to create a world where everything seems real and most things plausible.

Hideo Tanaka, at the young age of thirteen, created a virtual reality game and became the world’s richest man. His virtual reality replaces smartphones. Much like posting on Twitter, people can share their memories with the world. All they have to do is turn on their glasses and sift through a few option buttons, and they can see what another person experienced. However, Hideo has managed to trick the mind into thinking the virtual reality is the real world, and people often use this game as an escape.

Emika is a bounty hunter. When someone commits a crime in the virtual reality of Warcross, she and other bounty hunters catch the criminal for a price. Having a criminal record herself, she is unable to find work aside from bounty hunting. But when she hacks into the best security system in the world, Hideo Tanaka gives her an offer she can’t refuse.

The book was rushed. Unlike Lu’s other series, the reader doesn’t learn much about character relationships. Because Marie Lu summed up the passing days in Warcross, the relationships were never clear. At some point, Emika’s teammates became close to each other, but it was sudden. Lu placed the relationships into this book but did not let them grow.

Despite the bad in this book, I did enjoy Lu’s short and sweet writing style. Instead of giving the reader paragraph after paragraph of description, Lu gets her point across and moves on. She manages to capture the reader and make them feel the intensity of a situation in only two to three pages. Lu uses the benefits of first-person point of view to show the reader her main protagonist’s emotions. With her side characters, dialogue and actions show the reader what the character feels.

Warcross is a character-driven book. The characters keep the reader interested until the end. The writing style is short yet intense. I give it a ⅗ and would recommend it to anyone looking for a short, yet interesting book.