Wildcard

Starred review from July 23, 2018
Sure to inspire even deeper devotion among Lu’s fans, this sequel picks up just three days after the Warcross finale, raising complicated questions about the consequences of technology and power. Emika Chen, exempt from Hideo Tanaka’s unleashed algorithm thanks to a lucky accident, is reeling from Hideo’s betrayal and the knowledge that Zero, the hacker whom Hideo hired her to neutralize, is Hideo’s long-missing brother, Sasuke, whose disappearance drives Hideo to create Warcross and the algorithm. Having realized that the algorithm, meant to eliminate violence, may be causing people to commit suicide, Emika enters a tenuous partnership with Zero and the Blackcoats, a secret organization working to destroy the algorithm, and attempts to gain access to it by winning Hideo’s trust. Though Emika maintains her moral center, she struggles to do right as the virtual world crosses into reality and becomes personal: “There’s a point where the lines start to blur, and I am standing in that place now, struggling to see through the gray.” Lu’s futuristic world, with its immersive technology, feels dangerously within reach in this action-packed escapade with a thoughtful, emotion-driven core. Ages 12–up.

September 1, 2018

Gr 8 Up-Emika Chen has been betrayed by Hideo, the man she cared most about and tried to help. Blinded by his all-consuming need to find his long-lost brother, he now controls most of the world through an algorithm in the lenses that everyone uses to connect to the NeuroLink, the system by which they access the virtual world. Only a very few people, like Emika and her old teammates on the Phoenix Riders Warcross team, are still using beta lenses that allow them to circumvent the algorithm. This is encouraging crime bosses and criminals to turn themselves in, but others, maybe even innocent people, are committing suicide. Emika, convinced that she alone must stop the algorithm, agrees to work with mysterious hacker Zero and his Blackcoats to undermine Hideo. But there's a thin line between right and wrong, and she's not sure whom she can trust, other than her old teammates. Fans of Warcross will enjoy even more time spent in the game, along with intrigue, action, and mystery. Emika owns her flaws and still tries to do the right thing, even when she's unsure what that is. While the character development of some of her teammates feel a little flat, Emika, Hideo, and Zero shine through. VERDICT A necessary purchase for libraries that have Warcross; those where science fiction circulates well, should pick up both volumes in this duology.-Kelly Jo Lasher, Middle Township High School, Cape May Court House, NJ

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 Bounty hunter turned reality game superstar Emika Chen thought she had her hands full when she became an internationally known competitor in the virtual-reality-game Warcross? championships. But that was before she learned the truth about her one-time love Hideo Tanaka, a young billionaire and creator of Warcross??and the inventor of an algorithm that puts everyone who uses his high-tech lenses under his control. Sure, Hideo's not trying to rule the world or anything?�this all started as a war on crime, after his little brother went missing years ago?but Emi can't agree with his methods. But she's got even bigger plans: there's a bounty on her head now, and if she's going to escape the assassins who are after her, she has to turn to Zero, the infamous, if not exactly trustworthy, hacker and his team. But they've got motives of their own, and Emi might get so tangled in a web of subterfuge that she can't break free. There's plenty of high-stakes double-crossing here, and this finale moves along at a breakneck clip. Series fans will be only too happy to zoom along for the ride.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2019
Emika Chen (Warcross) isn't over Hideo Tanaka, inventor of the virtual realityenabling NeuroLink, which was redesigned to subvert people's free will. While preparing for the Warcross championship rematch game, Emika is courted by Hideo's nemesis (and long-ago-kidnapped younger brother), Zero. This edge-of-your-seat sequel propels readers through action sequences and intrigue in the shadowy Tokyo underground, even as they may ponder the ethical implications of biotechnology, virtual realities, and artificial intelligence.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

November 1, 2018
Upon discovering that the NeuroLink (which enables augmented and virtual realities) has been implemented with a new algorithm that will be used to subvert people's free will, Emika Chen (Warcross, rev. 11/17) broke up with its inventor, the billionaire Hideo Tanaka?but she is not over him. Moreover, she is being courted by his nemesis, Zero, the only other person ever to have hacked the phenomenally popular Warcross game. Emika alone knows that Zero is actually Sasuke Tanaka, Hideo's younger brother, who was kidnapped under mysterious circumstances many years ago. As her team prepares for a rematch of the Warcross championship game, Emika is drawn into a complex web of lies and loyalties in the shadowy Tokyo underground as she strives to figure out what really happened to Zero and whether she can stop Hideo. This sequel is written in the same breathless, edge-of-your-seat style as Warcross, propelling readers through various action sequences and plot intrigues even as they ponder the ethical implications of biotechnology, augmented and virtual realities, and artificial intelligence. As this duology winds to its conclusion, the romantic tension between Emika and Hideo lingers, and there remains a promise of redemption for both of these characters?and for Zero, too. jonathan hunt

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from August 1, 2018
The fate of free will hangs in the balance as Emika must choose a side in this sequel to Warcross (2017).In the days after Japanese Hideo triggered the algorithm in the NeuroLink enabling him to control 98 percent of its users (all except those using the beta lenses), people are turning themselves in for crimes en masse, and some child molesters and murderers are even killing themselves. Those still using beta lenses--like Emika Chen, who is implied Asian-American, and her multicultural teammates--have a little more than a week until the beta lenses will download a patch and convert to the algorithm. The tight timeline has Emika dwelling on the team-up offer from Zero--which her friends are against as he's a terrorist--until her hand is forced by assassination attempts and Zero brings her into the secretive Blackcoat organization and into the know about his identity. Emika struggles with the Blackcoats' extreme ends-justify-the-means stance but goes along with their plan while teasing out the truth of what happened to Hideo's brother, Sasuke, all those years ago. The plotting is exquisite, with tiny details connecting back to the first book, big twists that never feel forced, and emotional power drawn from character growth. The flawlessly rendered characters anchor the sophisticated themes and world-altering stakes right up to the end game.A fast, intense, phenomenal read. (Science fiction. 13-adult)

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