Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth
This review is going to be fairly unexciting, as I have nothing really re-mark-able to say about this book. (ha, see what I did there? I know, I’m lame.)
Carve the Mark tells the story of rivaling nations on a single planet. From alternating POV’s of Cyra, a Shotet, and Akos, a Thuvheien, we see how are two enemies grow to accept the fates they were given by the Oracles.
So, lets tackled that Racism bit. I honestly don’t know what all the fuss is about. And maybe it’s because I give Roth the benefit of the doubt that she wasn’t intentionally making it so. With that being said, I read this after I read somewhere that there were racial undertones and didn’t even notice. I honestly don’t think they’re that noticeable unless you’re looking for it. But if that’s the case you can find stereotyping or racial similarities in a lot of books, but the reality is, SOMEONES gotta be the bad guy, the lesser race, or the unfortunate soul.
Okay, so now that the nasty stuff is out of the way, I am going to point one other thing about the book that made me cringe.
I absolutely hated that they called their smaller space ships ‘floaters’. Every single time I read it I thought of my brother coming over to me to look at his floaters. in. the. toilet. Yeah. I pictured a bunch of turds hovering around the sky carrying passengers. The comical part was that I also paired it with the bubbly noise for the little space ships in the Jetsons. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Scrill’s imagination.
So, the idea’s behind the book were great. From the current gifts that each person had, to the fates that they can try to change, to the culture created by each nation/planet. Unfortunately I found the story to be slow paced and pretty boring. Chapter 31 suddenly became very YA romance-y and I felt the chapter didn’t fit quite well with the rest of the book or the characters. In the end, I have zero desire to continue the series.
