Books 4 and 5 of 2021: The Accidental Apprentice, Warcross

Finished:

The Accidental Apprentice by Amanda Foody. It's been years since I accepted a book for review, but I really liked how this one sounded and the cover was cool, so I made an exception and took it. Because of that, I felt obligated to finish it. If I had read it on my own, I would have given up on it a few pages in.

Set in a (dull, dull, uncreative) fantasy world, an orphaned boy ends up being chosen by a magical beast (because, no matter that he lived in a dull, dull town creatively named Dullshire, he was special). He went off into the wild woods to Hogwarts the magical town there where things followed the same plot seen in 48327432740 other YA/MG books.

This book was an unoriginal mix of Pokemon, Harry Potter, and one of those books where someone bonds with a magical beast and it spends time as a moving tattoo on that person's body. It followed the same plot I've already read dozens of times.

While you can't blame a YA or MG book for not being enjoyable for adult readers, I was really grumpy about how unenjoyable, unoriginal, black/white characters this one was. Young kid readers (target audience is age 8-12) would like it, I guess. Adults should skip it.

Warcross by Marie Lu. Set in the near-ish future, the world had embraced augmented reality. Everyone wore special glasses so they could see VR laid over the real world (like Pokemon Go x1000000). The world was so so so so cool and I wanted to live there so badly.

The creator of those VR glasses also made a "video" (VR) game that was shipped with them, one free to play. So the entire world played, and it became the biggest event worldwide. A young, poor hacker girl got herself involved in the game, and through it met the creator of the game/VR glasses. A most wonderful relationship slowly, slowly, so wonderfully slowly grew through the book.

I LOVED the worldbuilding and the relationship, but much of the rest of the plot did nothing for me. Half whodunit, half hacker story. I wish the book had just focused on the relationship (an odd opinion for me to have!).

There's a second book in the series, but I'm not going to read it. The non-relationship plot was just not enjoyable enough for me to spend time reading the next book.