oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best YA fantasy! what will happen?i'm going to review this without giving too much away, which seems to be the publisher's desire, since this is the first time i have ever gotten an arc that had thisacross every single page. text blurred so no one yells at me. DON'T YELL AT ME!i am someone who liked the divergent trilogy. i even sort of liked those four stories: Four: A Divergent Story Collection. but i am SO SO pleased that roth has diverged (ho-HO!) from that path and gone off in a whole new direction with this book (which is apparently the first part of a duology). i do love an author with more than one idea in their head.in a lot of ways, this book is like sagait's got that same romeo and juliet in spaaaaaaace thing going on, where two people on opposite sides of a long and deeply-rooted cultural animosity develop special feelings for each other after one of them is basically the prisoner of the other. no wings, no horns, and no teevee-headed people, but the two crazy kids in this book do have some unusual abilities in the form of currentgifts.currentgifts. currentgifts.currentgifts.currentgifts.i still think this is a dumb word, but it's a little less dumb than i expected going into it. "current" does not mean a "now" gift, which is how i interpreted it from the synopsis, but rather to a gift from a magical current that runs through the galaxy, doling out special abilities to people. some of these abilities are useful, and some are more like burdens than gifts. think x-men. in spaaaaaaaace.i am not usually a fan of space-based novels, and i'm even less enthusiastic about the romantic parts of books, especially in YA. however, i most certainly enjoyed this book. the fact that it is set in space is easy to forget, which sounds like a criticism, but worked out well for me. it's otherworldly, but it's not full of people floating about in spacesuits or going through wormholes or making me feel inadequate in my understanding of, you know, science. the romance is what it is - it's certainly handled better than the romance in other books i have read (including divergent, now that i think about it). it unfolds slowly, it isn't too sappy, and it is grounded in circumstances that seem likely to inspire feelings of "you and me against the world;" where two characters who are treated as "other" by most people cleave to each other in their otherness and feelings develop in a way that makes sense. although maybe not to them:"You make no sense to me," she said.and happily - cyra is not tris recast in spaaaaaaaace.there are the superficial physical differences - cyra has darker skin, is much taller and sturdier than tris, and by the end of the book, something happens that alters her appearance in a way that i personally think is SO FREAKING COOL, and also ghastly. but more importantly, her personality is not just warming up the tris leftovers. they are both proactive and badass with the fighting skills without getting too sentimental when violence needs doing, but cyra has had a much harder path dealt to her than tris, and it has toughened her worldview, giving her more depth and darkness than tris ever had. Pity, I knew, was just disrespect wrapped in kindness.i will confess, it took me some time to get into this one. it may have been my headspace at the time of reading, or it may truly have been a slow starter. divergent grabbed me from the get-go, and i had expected this would be a typically fast YA read for me, but i didn't start really digging it until i was about a third of the way through. some of the drag of it is indeed the names and sillywords, and some of it just doesn't make sense, but a lot of the divergent world didn't make a lick of sense, and it didn't stop it from being entertaining. if books had to make sense, christianity never would have caught on.oh, and the title?-"Carve the mark," I said, my throat tight.and-"Carve the mark," he said. He was so hoarse the words almost didn't come out.what does it mean? why does it make throats tight and words hoarse? blur blur blur - you'll have to wait for that.***********************************************i'm a little surprised by some of the negative reviews, 'cuz i liked it. are my critical faculties rusty? i'll review it soon and you can tell me i'm wrong. that's how this "goodreads" thing works, right? ***********************************************OOH, i got my hands on an ARC! now i can enjoy many silly words and names and i hope it's fun!i will dive in SOON!***********************************************i can't even make it through that synopsis without 1) getting bored and 2) activating my "fantasy genre silly-name" shield, but as one of the few people who did like the way Allegiant ended (or at least didn't have a problem with the thing most people hated it for), i gotta say i'm looking forward to this. bring it on, silly names and all!come to my blog!

Oh dear!! Where do I start?????Racial stereotyping and cultural misappropriations.Unflagged trigger warnings.And a romanticised depiction of chronic pain (something that is very personal to me).But let's begin with the writing. Wow talk about dull! The first half of this book was so incredibly tedious. The pace, the plotting, the world building (what world building?!?!)... It just dragged. It felt uninspired, insipid, unimaginative, take your pick! Was this book set in space??? It didn't feel like that to me. One of the things that I really didn't like with regards to the writing was the format of switching points of view. It just did not work because it was so poorly executed. It seemed much too haphazard and really hindered the flow of the narrative. So the basic set up is there are two races of people sharing some planet. They hate each other because *reasons* and hatred & drama ensue. Okay. Controversy number one: Racist undertones Many people have been incredibly offended by the depiction of the races in this book saying that it reinforces negative stereotypes within our society. There's a seemingly more civilised race versus a more savage one. Personally I found that there was enough nuance with regard to the diversity of the descriptions of the physical appearances of the two races, but, I think this may have been due to my prior knowledge of this controversy because I was actively reading looking for the differences. If you step back from the book, the overall impression of the two races is not so clear. And there were also worrying descriptors used to ascribe differences between characters, e.g. a reference to curly hair tight enough to capture a finger which is reminiscent of the pencil test used during apartheid times in South Africa to ascertain skin colour. An inadvertent unconscious similarity??? At any rate, I think that conceptually this was a bad idea. Because division of race, even in a fantastical setting, is going to cause problems within our own reality. It is going to offend. And surely that isn't the way forward? I also found a lot of ethnic stereotyping going on in this book. Parts of various cultures being borrowed in a less than savoury manner. Basically at times I felt the book was not carefully researched and therefore did not provide a well thought out and sensitively structured system of beliefs for the people in the story. Trigger Warning Self Harm At this point I would like to draw your attention to some ritualistic behaviours the Shotet people do regarding marking their bodies. In particular during chapter 13 there is a very detailed description of something that could be incredibly triggering to anyone who has issues regarding self-harm. While I personally am okay with the theory behind this behaviour I strongly feel that there should be a warning on the back cover of this book with regards to this behaviour. When are authors and publishers going to take some responsibility for the possible detrimental effects of the content of their published works??? Back to the story:The three main characters in this book are:Cyra, a Shotet girl who experiences chronic pain. Her power hungry, villainous brother Ryzek.And then there is Akos, a Thuvhesit boy fated to serve his Shotet enemy. Let's start with Akos.... I've pretty much nothing to say about him. He was about as interesting as a piece of cardboard. Zero personality. One dimensional. Boring...move on!!!Ryzek, the big bad. Likes to rape minds and steal memories. He could have been a quite chilling character but his portrayal descended into pantomime theatrics and a sensitive subject such as forcibly taking what you want and thereby violation of another person was very badly handled. Next controversy: Rape CultureSo Ryzek rapes Cyra's mind thus causing the early onset of her 'currentgift' which leaves her experiencing chronic pain for which she is ultimately told is her fault because she feels she deserves this pain... That bother anyone else??? Reinforce the idea of victim shaming/blaming???And finally, there is Cyra. She's an interesting character. It's a bold move to attempt to write a character suffering from chronic pain... But was it a move that paid off??? Well with regards to the storyline yes!With regards to upsetting and offending sufferers of chronic pain then it's a big no. Chronic pain controversySo here's a little information about me. Many of my Goodreads friends will know that from time to time I have mentioned that I suffer from multiple chronic illnesses. (Yes multiple.) And one of those illnesses in particular causes great physical pain. It causes more pain than I could ever possibly explain to you. My chronic pain took hold of my life when I was still a child almost 25 years ago. So I think that living with chronic pain for the best part of a quarter of a century qualifies me to discuss it. My first problem with Cyra's chronic pain is the terminology used. It is frequently described as a 'currentgift'. In the glossary a currentgift is explained as follows: thought to be a result of the current flowing through a person, currentgifts are abilities, unique to each person, that develop during puberty. They are not always benevolent.Isn't that last line about this currentgift not always being benevolent great??? As if it somehow excuses you from the offensive terminology of calling the suffering of the main character a 'gift'.Here's a tip for you. Do not ever call chronic pain a gift. Even if it's in a slightly made-up word that you feel the need to explain in the back of your book. What really annoyed me in this instance is how Cyra referred to her pain as a gift. I could accept anyone else in the book referring to it as such and put it down to their ignorance and then possibly have Cyra show why it should not be called such a thing... But she FREQUENTLY called it a gift without any hint of irony, derision or sense of injustice!!! Only once did she disagree, but then, instead of referring to the pain in some other manner, she continued on with this gift terminology. My pain is not, and will never be a gift. I will always experience pain. There is no out. And I am incredibly offended by even remotely suggesting that it could possibly be construed as a gift. Where is my gift receipt please because I'm sending this unwanted gift back!!! Also, my chronic pain is not an ability. An ability???? I don't do magic tricks with it. Unless you want to see how easily I can swallow large painkillers with barely a mouthful of water so I don't vomit!!!!! Okay. I get where the idea of this character is coming from. And there are aspects to the descriptions surrounding Cyra's pain that I really liked.The pain was just part of life now. Simple tasks took twice as long because I had to pause for breathGreat stuff! The normality of everyday living changes completely when you live with chronic pain. You don't have an off switch from it, you have different levels of intensity and somehow you get through a day. And everything takes so very long. Even something as simple as getting out of bed in the morning can take hours. If anyone is interested in understanding more about the life of someone with a chronic illness I would love to direct you to "The Spoon Theory". It's a very simplistic but beautiful way of expressing what daily life can be like for chronic illness and pain sufferers. I would encourage anyone to read up on it so you can understand what normality is for those people like me who live under the radar with our invisible diseases. You can read all about it HERE.So here's another problem with the portrayal of chronic pain in the book. It may be stated once or twice that simple tasks take longer etc but I saw no extended periods of fatigue as a result. Cyra was frequently able to fight in a gym type environment... Really??? Like ALL of the time????? Trust me. There are days that no matter how much you try to push through the pain you can't. You just can't. There is insufferable and unending fatigue. Also, if Cyra was truly in as much pain as she was, she would absolutely have been an insomniac as was stated in the book (case in point I'm writing this review at 4am) but she also would have, at times, passed out from the pain. However, there was one lovely quote I liked that I could very much identify with: That he couldn't feel pain also meant he didn't know about the grey space just beneath consciousness that made it more bearable. I love that grey space. I frequently stay hours in that grey space and don't know where my day has disappeared to all of a sudden. So I needed more moments like this. More explanations to ground Cyra's pain in reality. Pain so often should have consumed her body so much that she would have laid there motionless until unconscious. You often cannot take the pain and that needs to be shown more. It goes to this whole romanticised notion of pain. How suffering is some great beauty. That brings me to chapter 25 (mild spoiler ahead) In this chapter Cyra comes to the conclusion that ultimately the gift is the strength the curse has given me... I can bear it. I can bear pain. I can bear anything.This is insulting and wrong on so many levels. I know that ideologically this is a lovely thought. It goes to the idea that being someone living with pain and fighting through to live another day is admirable. Look at how stoic she is, so brave, so strong.... So spare me your melodrama!!! That is an idea for people who don't live with daily pain. It is there, to comfort them. To justify why some people live lives of pain and others don't. It goes to the notion that pain is a burden which is only given to those who are strong enough to carry it. Not true. Pain is indiscriminate. Pain corrupts. Pain infiltrates your every fibre of person. It changes you. You don't become strong you become institutionalised to it. You fall back on survival mechanisms. Don't glorify those mechanisms as some sort of admirable strength. I don't want to bear "anything" thanks. The pain is quite enough. It also alludes to a dangerous concept that as pain sufferers we somehow have this skill or ability to take more and more and more. As if we should never feel that the pain is too much??? Trust me, with chronic pain the pain is MUCH too much, and this concept that Cyra thinks that her ability to bear incalculable amounts of pain makes her somehow strong is insulting. It is okay to not be able to bear unending pain every day. It is okay to feel like it is too much. It is okay to need help. It is okay to not have to suffer in silence. It is okay to not have to be martyred by pain. I would also like to have seen a greater emotional impact on Cyra of what it is like to live with pain for so long. I too was a child when pain took hold. I will never forget that first day of experiencing pain. What it was like ripping through my little body. So where was the hatred? The bitterness?? The why me??? The only self loathing we had on Cyra's part was because of how she inflicted her pain on others and her guilt over that. (Btw, also offensive. I would never wish my pain on another soul so to say that that is something a chronic pain sufferer would do... Yeah... Not impressed!) But I would have much preferred this loathing to be based on the manifestation of her pain and not some outside event. I haven't even touched on the idea that Cyra's love interest in this story lessens her pain which just adds this book to the myriad of other YA novels out there that tells the reader that love can cure no matter what ails you be it a mental health issue or a physical illness.... At the end of the day, this is a fictional story and Cyra does not suffer from a chronic illness per se (I'm incredibly aware that in future books there is a possibility for a narrative surrounding healing which I hope the author will not explore). But as this is fictional who am I to say that the experiences of Cyra shouldn't be written as they are. Veronica Roth has claimed that she experiences chronic pain and perhaps this is how she feels... It just is not my experience of life with pain.On the whole this is a very problematic book. It has issues with poor writing and character development to start with. There are potentially offensive racial undertones, an unflagged trigger warning regarding self-harm and what I believe is an ineffectual representation of chronic pain. But I don't think that Veronica Roth set out to be racist or ableist or any such thing. I believe that she is just a writer very much out of her depth lacking in proper guidance. I feel there is a sad indictment on the publishing industry that somehow allowed this book to slip through editing and proof reading with the presence of so many questionable aspects. So my last thoughts on this book are for Ms Roth and for her future writings. In the words of the great Samuel Beckett:"Ever tried, ever failed, no matter. Try again, fail again, fail better." one star---------Reading this with my favourite book group.Some pre-reading/viewing surrounding the controversies:Justina Ireland Blog: The Trope of the Dark Skinned AgressorSaaba Tahir's defence of the racism issues Veronica Roth's 'Carve The Mark' Is A Fantasy Inspired By Chronic Pain : NPRThis gift sucks Veronica, where do I return it. Blog post: Trout NationVideo Chat Carve the Mark (in particular watch between 10 and 12.5 minutes)It has also been brought to my attention how the "kill marks" that are placed on certain characters skin in this book could be triggering to anyone with issues surrounding self-harm. So if that is something that affects you please be advised. Here are two of my Goodreads friends reviews that are able to better express the issues surrounding that: Amber's reviewCaitlin's review

What a person did when they were in pain said a lot about them. AkosYey, I finally finished reading this controversial book. Before I even picked it up, I did some extensive research just because so many people were ranting about it. I watched reviews on YouTube, which were rarely positive in tone. Heck, I even saw a video wherein the BookTuber burst into tears because of all the stress this book had been giving her. Of course, I was quite moved by all of the drama surrounding the release of Carve the Mark. Still, I wanted to remain as objective as possible, so I also perused the Web for Veronica Roth's written and recorded responses. After reading her blog post (which addressed the issues of racism and ableism), I eventually mustered enough courage to read this book. To my surprise, it was a month-long journey.Carve the Mark is a thousand miles away from the Divergent Trilogy. The novel is set in a fantastical universe where a literally flowing entity called the Current surrounds nine unique planets. If you've read Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi, you can imagine the Current as the aurora-borealis-like Aether. Personally, the Current reminded me of the Lifestream in Final Fantasy VII. :D Anyways, like the Aether in UTNS, the Current in CTM gives humans supernatural abilities. However, in the case of Cyra Noavek, her gift is more like a curse because it racks her body (and others) with constant pain. The story kicks off when she meets Akos Kereseth, a supposed enemy who can nullify the Current and thereby ease her pain. (Trigger warning for Feminists xD)From the get go, I want you to know that I wasn't so hurt or bothered by this book. Thankfully, it did not overwhelm me with angst, hatred, or sadness. If anything, the worst feeling it evoked in me was boredom. The first hundred pages were especially info-dumpy, and I found myself struggling to stay awake. It didn't help that there were so many side characters with ridiculous names. With that in mind, reading this book required a lot of effort and patience.My reading experience became somewhat better when I became familiar with the complex world and the author's quite different writing style (i.e. Cyra's chapters are in first person, while Akos's are in third person). I was specifically intrigued by Cyra's interactions with her villainous brother, Ryzek. In spite of their filial connection, it was clear that they did not love each other at all. As for the romance between Cyra and Akos, I thought that it was reminiscent to that of Divergent's Tris and Four. How so? It also happened because of multiple training sessions. Ha-ha. Looking at the bright side, at least what they had was not instalove.Among the many characters in this book, Cyra was strangely my favorite. I found her very entertaining because she exhibited what I like to call Tris Syndrome. Like Tris, Cyra wasn't aware of the fine line between bravery and stupidity. Also, she could be selfless to a fault. Basically, Cyra's uncanny similarity to Tris gave me a feeling of nostalgia, as well as a cynical kind of pleasure. :p As a final note, I can confirm that this might trigger readers who have suffered from self-harm; There are scenes where the protagonists use heated knives to scar their arms. As for the racism issue, I actually did not detect any kind of discrimination against people of color; not all Shotet are dark-skinned "barbarians," and not all Thuvesits are pale-skinned "hippies." Overall, I am glad that I gave Veronica Roth the benefit of the doubt. Still, I cannot say that this is her finest work. Otherwise, this book wouldn't have been so controversial.