Rating: 4/5

Genre: YA dystopian/sci-fi

Recommended Age: 16+ (some sexual references)

Pages: 352 Pages

Author: Mary Weber

Amazon

So I could NOT get enough of Warcross and Ready Player One, so fortunately I found this book to help tide me over until the next installment of Warcross and the Ready Player One movie comes out. While this book does not specifically focus on its game Fantasy Fighting (which is bloody and also reminds me of another dystopian book called The Hunger Games), it does have that gritty gamer vibe that I loved from Warcross and Ready Player One. I also loved how developed all of the characters were and how much world building there was in this book.

However, I did have problems getting into this book. I felt that the pacing was a little slow in this book and I felt that some of the parts in this book were a little overcomplicated. I’m also confused as to the game portion of this book. Like Hunger Games, Warcross, and Ready Player One had an explanation to these games while in this book it’s just like “well we’re bored… let’s have kids kill each other!” And why are children sellable in this future and why is the world split into corporations? That wasn’t very well explained in this book either.

Verdict: I loved the feel of this book, but I was left with more questions than answers. The characters, the diversity of the characters, and the world building definitely pull the majority of this book though.