About the Book

Book: Warsafe Author: Lauren Smyth Genre: YA Science Fiction Release date: May 6, 2025 Play. Win. Survive. There’s one building on her island that Halley has never visited: the Mercenary House. Perched atop a mountain, surrounded by unnaturally evergreen foliage, the House is rumored to be a breeding ground for criminals. Mercenaries are liars, cheats, spies . . . and maybe, depending on who you ask, killers. At the Warsafe headquarters in Seattle, Roscoe is beta testing the company’s new video game. It’s her job to track down glitches—but something is different about this one. Lurking behind the lines of malfunctioning code is a secret that threatens to drag her deeper into the game, forcing her to put her life on the line if she ever wants to come home. Worlds collide as Roscoe teams up with Halley to uncover the island’s secret and expose Warsafe’s designs. But some mysteries are better left unsolved. As traitor after so-called traitor is revealed to be on their side, they begin to wonder: Could Warsafe’s mission be critical enough to justify its cruelty?

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About the Author

Lauren Smyth is an economics and journalism student at Hillsdale College. Since signing her first publishing contract at age 13, she has written three young adult action/adventure novels, coded two story-based video games, and started a blog enjoyed by readers and writers around the world. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her flying right seat in a Piper PA-30 aircraft, recording episodes of her Grammar Minute writing podcast, or heading upriver on her paddleboard.

More from Lauren

The Mercenary House, where much of Warsafe takes place, quite literally appeared to me in a dream. By age 12, I’d already watched way too many action-adventure movies. (Did anyone else grow up on Tom Clancy—The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games?) Most nights, I was hyped on fictional adrenaline, and I was able to lucid dream. So I got to star in highly imaginative and unrealistic versions of my favorite spy stories when I fell asleep. That night, I found myself trapped in the basement of an eight-story house. Guards patrolled the rooms outside, and somehow I knew I had to sneak past them to reach the top floor. I also knew I was dreaming and in no real danger, which made me brave. So I crawled through air ducts, hid in shadowy corners, and darted behind turned backs. And I escaped. The dream was so logical compared to others I’d had that it stuck in my mind. Why was I trying to get to the roof? Why did I agree to play this “game?” What was the secret behind that dilapidated, shadowy building where I’d been imprisoned? A few years later, I started coding video games. My first full-length game featured more than 100,000 lines of code and is probably part of the reason why I’m so near-sighted. I loved the results, but not the process. More than coding, I realized I loved storytelling—weaving together sentences and images and movements that became a world on the reader’s screen. I hadn’t forgotten my dream, but I didn’t have the Python know-how to turn it into a game. And I’d gotten sick of naming variables. (Somewhere in the source code for that first game, there’s an if-then statement oh-so-creatively named “againagainagainagainagainagainagain.” See also the classic: “help.”) What if, instead of crawling back to my code editing software, I wrote a book? And what if that book wasn’t just about a fictional video game, but was also an exploration of morality, economics, and politics in a parallel world? I believe that good books don’t answer questions; they make you ask new ones. They draw you into a situation you’ve never experienced and force you to take sides, rooting for or against characters, judging or supporting their choices. If you could stop a catastrophe by sacrificing a few people, would you do it? If you were offered control over someone’s life, would you take it? That’s the central dilemma of Warsafe. What you choose, who you agree with is up to you. Like a real video game, Warsafe lets you confront the same choices as the characters and work your way out of the puzzle—if you can do it without compromising your morality. Remember Warsafe’s motto: Safety requires the many to sacrifice the one. Disagree? Enter the Warsafe universe and prove it.

Interview with the Author

Do you read books in this genre? If so, who do you like to read?

Science fiction has been my favorite genre since I first picked up The White Mountains, a quick middle-grade tale of alien invasion by John Christopher. During exam season my freshman year of college, I discovered Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot short story collection, and that hooked me on his books. Now, I’m working my way through Robert Heinlein and cautiously attempting Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Friends have told me that Warsafe reminds them of Ready Player One and Ender’s Game. I enjoyed both of these books, but I didn’t read either until after I had written Warsafe, so I didn’t take inspiration from them. Personally, I think Warsafe reads a bit like a Lunar Chronicles novel—though again, I hadn’t read these until recently.

What is one thing readers would be surprised to learn about you?

Most people are surprised I didn’t study English in college. The closest I came was a journalism minor, which I mainly spent working with the radio station, not the newspaper. My philosophy is that knowing what to write about is just as important as knowing how to write. Since I didn’t have time to double-major, I picked the “about” and took a few writing classes on the side. I’ll graduate this May with an economics degree.

Perhaps a more interesting surprise is that I signed my first book contract when I was 13, a few days before my birthday. All I wanted to do back then was write, and I never got burnt out. Writing is still tremendously fun, of course, but I’m always trying to recapture that initial excitement and joy that kept me writing in every spare minute of my free time. Now, I feel like too many things compete for my attention.

What inspired you to write this book?

I once had a dream about a house with eight floors. I entered at ground level and had to sneak to the roof without getting caught by guards, who patrolled the main rooms and staircases. Even in the dream, I couldn’t understand what I was doing or why. Coloring in context led me to the main plot of Warsafe.

Later, in high school, I had a brief stint of interest in computer programming. One of my projects was a video game, which wrapped up at more than 120,000 lines of code. I spent so many nights staring at the ceiling, mentally debugging errors that were mostly due to ridiculously named variables. (One of these contained a player choice of “yes” or “no” and was helpfully called “againagainagainagainagain.” I could never remember how many “agains” were in the name, so I couldn’t search my code to find it.)

When I finally finished that project, I knew I was never going to do anything like it again. I was still interested in video games, but I figured writing a book would be simpler. That’s how Warsafe came to be centered on a game.

Someday, if I ever have time, I hope to code the Warsafe game as described in the book. Keywords: “if” and “time.” I doubt this will ever happen, but it’s fun to think about!

Share with me a few of your favorite things.

Economics. Debates about economics. Books about economics. Diagrams from economics. Money earned by practicing economics.

In all seriousness, I’m incredibly grateful that many of my favorite things are part of what I do for work. One of my favorite jobs to date has been writing news articles for an investment company. Another top-three is developing a radio show that explains commonly misused economics terms. Most people think of economics as the science of money, but I see it more like a giant, interconnected model of human behavior. Viewed that way, it’s surprisingly helpful for writing novels because it explains the “why” behind character actions.

Besides economics and writing, I love being outdoors, running, swimming, biking, hiking, and target shooting. I’ll often take my laptop on these excursions and find some kind of natural desk, usually patch of grass or a shady tree. My favorite outdoor office so far has been a four-foot-square rock in the Pacific Ocean.

Unsurprisingly, given Warsafe’s premise, I also play video games. I don’t have much time for this anymore, but I’ve always loved story-based games that I can play over and over, discovering new details each time.