Home Books Carve The Mark By Veronica Roth – Book Of The Month
Carve The Mark By Veronica Roth – Book Of The Month

Carve The Mark By Veronica Roth – Book Of The Month

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Welcome back to another Book of the Month as part of The Arcade’s Book Club! Make sure to watch out near the end of March as we’ll be meeting for a live YouTube discussion of the book!

This month we’re getting stuck into best selling author Veronica Roth‘s latest novel, Carve the Mark. Set in a galaxy where everyone is bestowed a ‘currentgift’ by a magical, God-like entity called the Current, Carve the Mark follows protagonists Cyra Noavek and Akos Kereseth as they struggle to survive the whims of Cyra’s brutal tyrant brother, Ryzek, amid the conflict between their warring countries, Shotet and Thuvhe.

Both Cyra and Akos are what is known as ‘fate-favoured’. Someone is fate-favoured when oracles (people whose current gift allows them to see all possible futures) discover someone’s future is the same no matter what path they follow. When Ryzek finds out Akos and his brother’s fates, he kidnaps them both and drags them across the Divide from Thuvhe to Shotet to serve the Noavek family, setting the events of Carve the Mark in motion.

First of all, be prepared for a slow burn because the pacing at the start of the book is awful. If you’re an aspiring author, you may find yourself thinking: “This book is on shelves while mine is on my hard drive? Pfft!” but give it a proper chance as it gets much much better after the first few chapters.

The book begins with the introduction of the Kereseth family in Thuvhe, an official nation-planet among the nine planets of Carve the Mark‘s galaxy (though the Shotet people would disagree on the name – they call it Urek!). There’s quite a lot of info-dumping in the first few chapters and it feels a little sloppy as we try to get a feel of the place. However, by the end of chapter 5 we have a very good idea of the divide between the Shotet and Thuvhesit people, currentgifts, fates, and the Noavek and Kereseth families. From then on, it’s plain sailing story-wise.

Although I could take or leave Akos (he comes across as very one dimensional until about the halfway mark), I loved Cyra’s character from the get-go. She’s so brave and strong and capable and my heart went out to her so many times. It’s been a long time since I read a YA book with such an inspiring lead; someone who is gecarvethemark2nuinely a role model for dealing with strife, who isn’t perfect and accepts it about herself. Cyra is so self-sacrificing throughout this book, and not just once; she does it time after time even though so many people see her as a monster. She’s a damn hero and it was a thrill to watch her development throughout the book and to see the goodness in her bloom.

Akos was more of a background character even though he’s a POV protagonist. Cyra was the star for me, and Akos would have died as Ryzek’s slave if it weren’t for her. Though in saying that, he did do a lot to help Cyra see herself as more than a weapon, and that created a domino effect to allow her to realise she can make changes to her life – good changes – and that she didn’t have to live and die as Ryzek’s puppet. Akos is a gentle sort of character – a big friendly giant – unless you’re on the other end of his fist, that is. My favourite aspect of his character is how hard he takes it whenever he has to kill. So many characters like him just take it in their stride and it has become a bit of a trope to kill without mercy and without regret, so his innocent heart was refreshing.

The story itself is a little fuzzy, and even now I’m kind of struggling to come up with a line to describe the actual plot without giving things away. Instead I’ll tell you what it has going for it; it’s about friendship and overcoming differences, it’s about understanding, bravery, love and all-consuming self-hatred. It also covers important issues like demonising other cultures for being different as well as mental and domestic abuse. It’s an ambitious story, one that spans countries and planets, and while it is far from perfect, it’s hard not to love Akos and Cyra’s journey of understanding each other.

One of my favourite parts of Carve the Mark was what gave it its namesake; carving a mark into your arm after someone dies is a tradition of the Shotet people, particularly if you have taken that life yourself. It may sound a little gruesome here, but in the book it comes across as a really touching way of grieving. Despite a lack of worldbuilding on Roth‘s part (I struggled to figure out if Shotet was cold like Thuve… honestly still don’t know), I liked how she put thought into the details of each culture.

Even though I really liked it, this book wasn’t without its controversy.

When the first review copies were sent out, there were a lot of negative reviews with many readers DNF-ing (DNF: Did Not Finish) very early in the novel. The reason for this was that readers claimed the book was racist because it promoted the trope of the dark-skinned aggressors against the white peace-lovers.

As someone who read the book from cover to cover, I don’t see how it was racist. When I looked at articles about Carve the Mark‘s supposed racism, what I found is many readers were basing their angry reviews off something that isn’t actually true. Most (if not all) of these readers were under the false impression that the Shotet people were dark-skinned and the Thuvhe were white. This isn’t at all true; quite the contrary in fact.

Both the Shotet and Thuvhesit people are hugely diverse in their skin colour. For instance, Akos’ brother and sister, Eijeh and Cisi, who are both Thuvhesit, are described as having light brown skin. Similarly Thuvhe’s chancellor also has brown skin, as does her sister. Cyra’s older brother, Ryzek (the villain of the story), is consistently described as being pale and white. Shotet characters Teka, Zosita and Yma are all described as white with pale hair. I really don’t see how anyone could read this book and think it was racist unless they weren’t paying enough attention or they picked it up looking for something that could be construed as racist, which is really sad. My theory is that readers discovered Cyra had dark skin like her mother and Akos had pale skin, and assumed that that meant all Shotet were dark and all Thuvhesit were pale. Basically, they jumped the gun.

The bottom line is that race doesn’t divide Thuvhe and Shotet, culture and deeply rooted prejudice does.

Overall, I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. I haven’t read the Divergent series by Veronica Roth, nor have I seen the movie (from what I’ve heard, I saved myself 8 quid there), but based on Carve the Mark I’d be very willing to give her future work a go and I’m actually quite excited to read Carve the Mark‘s sequel.

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