There is nothing like a good old book controversy am I rightttt??
Let me brief you on the plot before we get into the controversy:
This story is set in space, specifically a solar system where a current flows through all the planets as well as all the people. The current gives each person a gift. Cyra Noavek is the sister of Ryzek, the tyrant of the Shotet. He uses Cyra's gift to secure his rule and strike fear into anyone who considers crossing him, as Cyra's current gift is pain. She feels it constantly and anyone who touches her feels it too. Akos is from the rival planet Thuvhe. He and his brother are kidnapped by the Shotet off the demand of Ryzek. Akos' current gift forces him in constant contact with Cyra which makes it difficult to achieve his main goal, to escape with his brother, something he promised the moment they were taken. Cyra's time with Akos makes her question her loyalty to the not the Shotet, but her brother which is undeniably dangerous. Things for Akos are not boding too well either because the more time they spend there the more he questions what is really left of the brother he used to know.
So, something you all should know is that I am not all too familiar with science fiction but after reading this book I am obsessed with it. I have already added many sci-fi's to my want-to-read on good reads. I digress... The funky space lingo was never for a moment confusing and the world building -as can be predicted with any Veronica Roth book- was absolutely phenomenal. I got onto the Divergent series train a little late so after I was done with Allegiant I did not think I could move back onto regular non-Veronica-Roth written literature so I read this book and boy oh boy did I not have a clue what I was in for! I truly think this could be my favorite book (aside from Harry Potters obviously). If I find some solid world building that I can really see in my head than you have my attention. If I can see that world and then on top of that the characters that are in it are complex and exciting than I am all consumed. If you have all of that and then the actual plot is as amazing as this is then that, ladies and gentlemen, is the one way ticket to the heart of this rad reader. It's almost difficult to write a review on this book because there are so many layers to it, but I will try my best to well analyze it for you, but if I don't just read this book, trust me it will be worth your time.
Let's delve into our characters--
Akos Kereseth is an animal. Easy as that. He is only 12 or 13 at the time in the story when he has just been kidnapped by the soldiers of his nation's enemies and all he thinks about is the well being of his brother because he knows that he is not as strong as Akos. Then, flashback some 5 or so years later and the only thing that is still in the front of his mind is breaking his brother out. However, he has many layers to him. He feels it necessary to acclimate himself with his surroundings, familiarize himself with his captors and their customs. He is smart, strategic, desperate but not showing of it. He is careful not to let Cyra get close to him or he to her but he will pretend to do so to give hope to his brother. It is really awesome in stories like this when the circumstances are realistic, because in all seriousness if you have been a captor of a nations royal family for 5 or so years it is likely you would not be willing to befriend the sister of its dictator, but in many YA fiction, fantasy, sci-fi books they throw reality away for the sake of the plot but in actuality it makes the book way worse. Veronica Roth being the literary genius that she is obviously does not make this mistake and I think that fact that Akos is aware the whole time that these people he is around are his enemies is an interesting dynamic to read about!
Cyra Noavek is the definition of a lady boss. She is the coolest of the cool and she knows it, completely lethal and wears it like a badge of honor. She is always in pain but makes it a point not to crumble in front of anyone. It's respectable, admirable. She's fiercely independent which is a quality that I love in characters because that is how I feel I am myself and would like to be even more so as a grow up and it is obviously more appealing to read about characters you can relate to. An appeal to the human experience is one of the strongest appeals you can make as an author to the reader I have learned while reading many... many... many books :) Anyways, I am a sucker for some good character development and out Cyra Noavek is now my set definition of charachter development so alert the dictionaries ladies and gentlemen. Allow me to elaborate, when I first read her point of view I honestly thought she was pretentious and broody and annoying, but she turned it around and by the middle of the book I was obsessed with her! She went from a very much woe-is-me kind of personality to recognizing that the only way to get out of her situation is to be a fighter. I absolutely love reading about characters who are fighters, it makes you really want to root for them. Regardless, Cyra was awesome and by the end of the book in her fight scenes I was absolutely freaking out, just wait till you guys read it, I have never respected a character more. Just to give you a little hint without spoilers, there is basically a type of gladiatorial event and she is forced to fight in it and they are banking on her losing but she continues to kill everyone she faces and it is a really empowering moment in the book to kind of prove people wrong. Really cool!
Now briefly I would like to talk about the best villain in the history of villains I have read so far, the *drum roll please* Ryzek Noavek. I could read about evil villains all day but there was something different about this one!! He is just soooooo terrible in such an entertaining way, like there are moments where I just want to scream WHY at my book because of what he is doing to these characters that I have developed an emotional attachment to but then I take a step back and I'm just left like... "Well... that was kind of gnarly, pretty sick, okay... I respect it." It is soooo complicated, like for the sake of the plot I want things to go awry and for that I love a good smart evil villain but then I'm torn because for the sake of my own selfish love of these charchters I want all of their plans to work out but if they do work out than the book would be boring so I'm just stuck in this confusing book lover limbo. All is fair in book love and book war though, so I cannot complain. The result was a phenomenal story and I think Ryzek Noavek is one of the chief reasons why I loved it so much! He is evil in his methods and beyond clever, catching, and entertaining in his dialogue. Every time he is mentioned in the story you know something crazy is about to happen or be found out and I love being kept on my toes like that. It allows for a very exciting fast paced read!
Now, lets talk about the controversy. I do believe it would be inaccurate and honestly an ignorant decision to talk about this book without talking about the controversy, so let us discuss!
So, I read this book not having heard about it and when I did hear about it I was genuinely confused, like, had I read the same book as these people? So, basically the blog post that got this all started was taken down because I'm sure the writer of it realized that they was just absolutely wrong in their summary of the story. Essentially what they wrote was a mauling of the book for its "underlying racist theme" because the blogger had said that the two waring nations, the Shotet and the Thuvhe were "divided by skin tone." That there is a light skinned race that is gentle and a dark skinned race that is savage. There are these two nations; the Thuvhe are traditionally gentler in their practices, but it has absolutely -and I cannot stress this enough- 0% to do with skin color at all. Yes, the two countries are waring but in terms of race and appearance -aside from the fact that they don't speak the same language- the two societies are indistinguishable. That fact is actually brought up later in the book with Akos because he can speak Shotet even though he is from Thuvhe and that is because... *SPOILER ALERT FOR THE SAKE OF PROVING A POINT* he is actually a Shotet but obviously there is no way to be aware of that because there is no distinguishable differences in appearance based on where these characters are from. *END OF SPOILER* I read this book cover to cover and if you were to complete -seriously- only the first few chapters of this book you would come across lines that specifically talk about how in this futuristic world there are all types of skin tones, all types of people with different current gifts that come in different shapes and sizes. It's even said that it really has no relation to your parents what you turn out looking like, that a mother with the darkest complexion could give birth to someone with the whitest hair you'd ever seen. There is an emphasis on the fact of this futuristic world's essential lack of races so when I heard these complaints I was absolutely baffled. However, what I really respected about Veronica Roth's response to this was that she was not defensive. She let the people know the facts, let them know that they should read the book themselves before they form an opinion on it. However, she did not want to quiet the discussion. The fact of the matter is that there is no doubt that this is a problem in other books, though definitely not this one, it certainly exists in literature. She did not want to quiet the discussion because she is educated and knows that it is a problem not only in literature but in the reality, in the real world! But anyways, the main message is that there is no underlying racist theme in Carve the Mark. There is just genuinely no textual evidence to support the claim that it is racist. Are there two different societies? Yes, absolutely. Is that societal division marked by race or color? Certainly not! There is so much repetition throughout this novel of everyone having such blended blood. Even our main Thuvhe character has Shotet blood! What was this blog post talking about!? Ahhhh frustration!
All in all however, this book is absolutely one of my favorites of all time and has opened me up to a new genre that I find interest in, so if you have not already, I absolutely suggest you read this book. Form your own opinion about it!
I think what is so great about the book community is that it is a great big combination of purely opinions, some people like this and some people like that. Some people hate that but love this, it is all about preference and I think that is awesome. However, what is extremely important is that since virtually everyone in todays day and age has the power to publish their opinions to the internet it is important that we be educated and conversant on the topics that we discuss or else we get big messy book controversies with no textual evidence to back it up such as this one!
As for the my rad review of this book, I gave if 5/5 stars on Goodreads, so it goes without saying that I would recommend it to you rad readers!
Stay educated and stay cool my reader dudes,
- C8 :)