Review: Warcross

Warcross by Marie Lu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pre-ordered Kindle Edition (eBook), this is supposed to be published October 3d, 2017. This is in Germany a national Holiday, celebrating the Fall of the Berlin Wall (was seperating East-from-West-Berlin) in 1989. Instead I received this early, on September 12, 2017 (the day of the Apple Keynote for iPhone X).
Read the review from "Reading after Midnight" - the drawing of Emika Chen, the MC, is great, really beautiful!
Cannot totally agree with the analysis of the romance, though, I thought it was a mixture of fandom, Stockholm-Syndrome, and real love, until near the twist near the end. And I think it is totally believable and was very well written.

The world-building (inside Warcross) was great, with learning how it works not forced in one big massive boulder on the reader, then also the MC learning what she doe not know. With the review from "Reading after midnight" I agree, there could have been more hacking, but at least it was shown that there is some team-spirit, others helping and also near the end, the MC asking for help, which is always a good thing and well explained with the example of helping other but not daring to ask for help. As someone who spent his whole, short work-life helping others as a former Helpdesk-Slave, I can totally relate to that, but I am used to asking for help, also as I am sitting in wheelchair and some things I just cannot do on my own.
That was also a part I really liked, that it was subtly introduced that one of the other warcross players was part of the Paralympics-Team, (disqualified for getting into a fight with a teammate) and then switched to Warcross.
And then one of the main players, the Captain of Emika's Team is sitting in a big, expensive wheel-chair. Even that we do not get much details about that was very good, felt naturally integrated, as if it is not a big deal - which it should not be, but would be nowadays.

Not a lot of twists, until near the end, and I guessed the real name of Zero quite early, felt obvious to me. No sex, just kisses and a little romance, felt a bit juvenile to me, as they are all at least 18, most older, I am not convinced, there should have been sex, even if happening off-page.

Regret mostly that I have to wait for the next book, but will definitely read her other Trilogy (Legend), which I have already marked as "reading" some time ago, but have not really started. Also my "currently reading" list is way too long, I will try to FastForward/DNF a few books to make this list shorter and more realistic.

As far as I have gathered from comments, the next book will offer the POV from ZERO.
Highly recommended, but as it is supposed to be a Trilogy, the whole will decide for me wether it was worthwhile. Like the style of writing though, chapter-lenth is good, so I hope book #02 and #03 do not disappoint. Ah, the long wait for not-yet-published-book...

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