“Tearing something down isn't the end; doing something great, or better, something right, is.”

Wildcard by Marie Lu is the sequel and finale to Warcross, Lu’s 2017 sci-fi hit. It continues Emika’s story after the thrilling and surprising events of Warcross, revealing new allies, enemies, and secrets, and continuing the premise that not everything is as it seems in the tech world of Emika and her friends.

I wasn’t sure when I’d get around to reading Wildcard, as I didn’t end up preordering nor had plans to buy it soon, but when I saw it available on Libby from my library I snatched it up right away! Warcross was a quick read and I expected its sequel to follow the same pattern, and I needed a quick read right then. My reading friends were kind of split on whether they thought it was a decent sequel/conclusion, so I went in not really sure what to expect from it, and in the end, I’m kind of stuck in the middle.

My biggest issues were all with the first 60% of the book. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, no specific writing, character, or plot issues, it just felt like something was missing. The spark that Warcross had simply didn’t exist in the first half of the book for me, and I didn’t feel truly connected with the story. It zoomed by so quickly and so fast, that it forgot to take me along with it. I was reading the story and understanding the events and how all these pieces fit together, but I wasn’t connected, invested, in what that all meant. Most books grab you and that world takes over your own for a while, but that didn’t happen right away here, and for a sequel, it was a bit disappointing. I just plain didn’t care for the first part.

When the ending started really kicking in, and things were finally coming together and starting to make sense, I finally found the spark again, the reason I loved Warcross and Emika and all the others. I found the way things ended to be a perfect conclusion, both how the immediate plot was wrapped up as well as the distant future explained. But it just wasn’t enough to fully save the reading experience for me, and that’s why this book is only getting 3 of the 5 golden stars.

After reflecting, I’m more able to pinpoint the specific problems with the book that may have caused my original distance and why the final portion drew me back in. We spend the beginning portion of the book with fairly shallow feeling characters, as I never felt like Emika’s Warcross team and other friends ever got enough build up to mean something to me. Of course, I cared what happened to them, but I wasn’t necessarily too interested either. When you add this to the new characters added in the beginning, it feels too much like an entire beginning, with characters you’re supposed to know and love but just don’t yet. It keeps you at a distance, like you don’t fit in this circle with these people. However, as the book goes on and you learn more about Sasuke and Jax, one of the new characters, a connection starts to be built again, and this is where I started getting into the book. This in addition to the increasingly larger role Hideo plays, the secondary character who received most build up in book 1, I started to feel more at home in the story, and thus enjoyed it more. It all just came a bit too late.

All in all, I don’t regret reading this series at all, and I’ll always read whatever Marie Lu writes next! I just wish I had gotten back into this faster, and been able to enjoy the ending to its fullest.