Kali Ling is a professional in the Virtual Gaming League and is the first female captain of a team. She's young and determined to be the best, especially when her team lost in the opening gambit of the RAGE tournament. Despite that, there's a lot of glamor and glitz, which is easy to get lost in. It also hides a seamy underbelly to the League, and Kali has to decide what is actually important to her.

I really appreciated Kali being ethnically half Chinese and half American. It is referenced a few times throughout the book, as she figures out how much of the pushback she experiences in the League is because she's a woman or because of racism. There are few enough mixed race characters mentioned in a lot of books, let alone characters where it really isn't the most defining characteristic about them.

She's a player first, and the background means that there's a theme of balance and heritage. This is especially important as she grasps addiction, grief, loss and trying to find her sense of self. These are very serious issues, especially in a gaming context, but also because of her youth. She's very empathetic, and all of the members of the team are fleshed out and just as much fun to get to know. It really does take friends and family support to provide the strength to overcome problems.

There will be a sequel to this novel, and I'm sure it's going to be just as great as this one.

I really enjoyed this book and it's virtual reality world. I loved Kali as a character, she was strong, relateble and resourceful, she fought to strive and survive no matter what was placed in her path. I think I found this book so exciting, as I could see it as a reality; you could see VR sport jumping to this level in the not so distant future. Overall I really enjoyed this book, and if you are into sci-fi or gaming I would say give this a go, you won't regret it!

I received an ARC of Arena from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

The idea behind Arena is very interesting, which is why I wanted to read it. Virtual Reality gladiator games. I mean, come on. That sounds totally awesome. And it was totally awesome.

It also totally was not. Stupid 3-star wishy-washy stuff.

If I'm being honest, I don't know if I could tell you exactly what I didn't like about this book. It was all kind of meh for me. I think a lot of it had to do with the pacing of the story. There was so much buildup for the big championship battle. Tons of training, fighting, partying, all this stuff and then we finally get to the battle and I'm pretty sure it was over in like three pages. Okay, so maybe it was more like a chapter, but a single chapter? After all of this, all I get is a single chapter? I was expecting more, I guess, though how much more I don't really know. I mean, there's only so much you can do to drag out a battle in which all you have to do is kill a couple of people. It just felt really anticlimactic, especially when it was never a doubt what the outcome of the tournament would be. Obviously I won't say it outright cause of spoilers, but I'm sure you can guess.

I liked Kali well enough. Though there was a bit of time when I wanted to reach into the pages and knock some sense into her, she came around in the end and I thought that Kali's decision after the tournament was the way to go. It was also a nice setup for the next book, so there's that too.

There was also a lot of, I don't want to call it "preaching," per se, but something along those lines, most of it having to do with celebrity status and stereotypes and that kind of thing. While I agree that these are terrible things, the author was putting a lot of emphasis on it, to the point where I almost didn't care anymore. Yes, covering up the teammate's overdose wasn't cool. Yes, cultivating people to fit a certain image is stupid. But when it's mentioned every other paragraph it becomes tedious and overdone. I almost began feeling like the author was accusing me of doing those things and I'm going, "But I don't even live in your fictional world..."

Anyway, Arena was a fun read and I recommend it to any lover of video games.

I really enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected I would.
I loved the concept and the world building was really interesting. I love the idea of VR becoming such a massive "sport" and the whole book felt futuristic yet obtainable. With VR becoming more readily available, I can definitely see gaming jumping to a whole new level.
I really loved Kali and I though she was a very complex character. I really appreciated how the author included Kali's struggles with being a women in a man dominated industry. I liked how the sexism towards Kali and her fellow women gamers was shown and not swept under the rug. I also really appreciated how Kali didn't let it stop her from gaming.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was very different from anything I've read before and I loved the concept. If you're into video games or sci-fi, I think you might want to check this book out.

Given a chance to read this book I thought it would be interesting as it sounded, I was a bit hyped up for it as well, since it dealt with gamers and it being 'big' in the world. I wasn't happy with it, as it turns the world of gaming into what we see about rock stars being involved in drugs, sex, and fame.

The main character is Kali apart of a team where she's got a friend with benefits who OD's in her bed. The team and Kali have a hard time struggling through it and adjusting to their new team member. Kali takes an interest in him and realizes she's as badly addicted to everything as everyone else and with the new guy's help and Taoist bible as Kali calls it is able to break free from her addictions. The focus is more on the addictions and Kali's life verses what the game is about as it doesn't seem all that interesting.

The flow of it seems fine, but it feels like it was lacking something. Things were predictable within the writing and as it was more focus on the life outside the gaming world of the player, rather than the game it feels a bit misleading. It's a decent read but it was hard to stay connected and finish the book.