What if the world went virtual?

A review of the novel Arena by Holly Jennings.

This book blew my mind. The concept is one that can be placed somewhere between Ready, Player One and The Hunger Games, but is different enough from each to be considered unique.

The main character, and from whom the point of view of the book is taken, is Kali Ling. She's a Chinese American female "gamer" (as they're called in the book), and is one of the few females in the sport. Oh, yeah, virtual reality gaming is considered an official sport in the world of Arena! She's bad-ass, witty, and entirely relatable.

Kali takes on an important role in her team when she is made captain - the first ever female captain in the history of the RAGE tournaments. Her character is very carefully crafted, and struggles with things that make complete sense for someone living in the high-tech, futuristic setting of this novel. The other characters on her team captured my heart and interest as well, and I loved seeing these characters grow and connect as a team in a world that isn't all that different from our own.

The setting was one of my favorite things about this book. It's similar enough to our world today that it's almost easy to see how VR gaming could become an official "sport", and everything about the world ruled by the Virtual Gaming League is so well thought out! I'm someone who enjoys a good video game, and finds the concept of VR games thrilling, this book was right up my alley.

Furthermore, there were so many plot twists and intense scenes in this book that it had me reading until my eyes hurt. There were a couple of slow parts in the book, but they weren't the bad "I'm bored out of my mind" kind of slow; rather, they were the good "character development is happening but I want to go back to the action" kind of slow. The kind of slow that is necessary, and when looking back on the book, those moments in it were actually rather sweet and tender. In a way, they acted as the "calm before the storm" for the intensity of the book as a whole.

In a nutshell, this book blew my mind. It was another one of my used bookstore finds, and I'm so glad that I decided to pick it up! It contains great character development and dialogue, great battle scenes, wonderful female representation, as well as LGBT representation. The only reason why I'm not going to be giving this book a full 5 stars is because some of the character interactions felt a little bit forced, as did some of the dialogue that was probably supposed to be witty. But, that is easy to overlook because of how good the rest of the book was.

There's also a sequel to it that I will definitely be keeping my eye out for! It was released just last year, and is called Gauntlet. If you're someone who likes video games, science fiction, and a dash of romance, I think you should check out this book! However, there is some language, sexuality, and violence, so I wouldn't recommend it if you prefer not to read books with that kind of content.

Arena by Holly Jennings - 4.5 out of 5 stars