Wildcard stripped itself of all the elements I enjoyed in its predecessor – no more Warcross games, no thoughtfully explored moral questions, unconvincing aspects in the world-building, and worst of all, Emika Chen, our wonderfully headstrong and quick-witted heroine, showed limited, if not, arguably nonexistent agency throughout the story.

Aside from Emika Chen, the rest of the characters in Wildcard were very weakly written. I was not invested in any of them, except maybe Hammie – but even that is a huge stretch. Likewise, the antagonists in the story were insufferably flat and ridiculously one-track-minded. Their respective motivations were literally explained in the book, but even then, I was still pretty unconvinced.

The plot in this sequel was incredibly, wildly unpredictable in a ‘what is this literary hot mess’ kind of way. The lineup of events failed to really tie together and to make logical sense; everything just seemed to be a jumbled mess with half-hearted “plot twists” thrown in. In fact, there were numerous “surprising reveals” (yes, I stand by my use of quotation marks) that appeared to have no significant goal other than (1) unnecessarily extending the plot, and (2) shock factor.

Not only was the whole plot messy, illogical, and difficult to follow, but to make matters worse, the pacing of the book was terrible. For the most part, the timeline of events spanned only eight (8) days. The pacing of these events frequently dragged, only to suddenly rush through the story’s climax and resolution in the most unsatisfying way imaginable.

In line with this, the resolution itself was unbelievably unsatisfying and frustrating as it was very Deus ex Machina (For a clearer example, think of that god-awful Batman vs. Superman film, folks). And this was not the first ✨ magically convenient ✨ occurrence in Wildcard; nope, in fact, the story was interspersed with annoyingly convenient fixes and borderline miraculous events.

All in all, Wildcard is, in my opinion, a woefully substandard sequel that I am excited (and relieved) to finally leave behind. I cannot imagine myself ever recommending this book to anyone. If anything, I’d recommend everyone to abandon this sci-fi duology and read (or, in my case, reread) Marie Lu’s Legend trilogy instead.

Disclosure: I received a physical ARC of Wildcard from the publisher and, in exchange, was supposed to participate in a blog tour, which I decided to withdraw from for obvious reasons. Still, many thanks to the blog tour organizer and the publisher for the opportunity!