Book 11: Warcross (Warcross #1) by Marie Lu

Format:  Kindle
Date Started:  February 28, 2019
Date Completed:  March 6, 2019

I'll just say it - I found this book to be incredibly derivative.  While I was reading it, my mind kept drifting off to think about "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline and just how much better it was than this book.

Virtual World - check - advantage "Ready Player One"
High Stakes Gaming - check - advantage "Ready Player One"
Teens Banding Together - check - advantage "Ready Player One"
Romance - check - advantage "Ready Player One"

I found the ability of the NeuroLink to augment reality super interesting in that it allows its users to recreate their actual world, and I would much rather have read about how that affects human interaction than spending pages as one-dimensional characters had one dimensional interactions.  For example, Emika's relationship with her father isn't explored at all -- he was an artist with a gambling problem which offers LOADS to unpack character-wise. 

Given my love of a series, it pains me to know that I'm not going to read any of the other books.  But, alas, I'm not into the characters enough to keep going.