Carve the Mark - Veronica Roth (audiobook)

I had high hopes for this book, despite the "love it or hate it, no inbetween" reviews I'd seen. I put most of my faith in it because I enjoyed the Divergent series so much, and I guess I assumed it'd be in the same vein. Which I guess it isn't too far off, but definitely too far off for my liking.

I enjoy fantasy writing - when it's complete. I don't feel like this was complete. I wasn't able to build myself a new world, so I felt kind of stuck trying to picture the space that we know, when in reality I believe it was intended to be a deep space totally unknown to us. My imagination isn't good enough for half-assed crazy location descriptions. On top of that, it was just incredibly slow. I kept wondering if there was a point and if we were getting to it. It had the second book of a trilogy curse...except that it was the first book. Yikes. It doesn't make me pace with anticipation of the second installment.

In terms of characters - it was refreshing to see Cyra take on the 'troubled' personality and characteristics often found in male characters. I did really enjoy that, too often the female plight is centered around much more feminine topics. I generally liked Cyra and Akos as characters, which may be the only thing that has me remotely considering continuing in this series. Now, to address that absolute chaos that this book has caused re: racism, rape, and other touchy subjects. STOP. Sometimes, a book is just a fucking book. This is not The Hate U Give. This is a fucking fantasy book. Roth would've been slammed if she hadn't included "dark skinned" characters (dark skinned is also a debatable subject - Thuve were described as fair skinned and Shotet as darker skinned - this could literally mean Icelandic and Greek for all we know). Part of the reason racism is as alive and well as it is, is because there are people who search for it in literally every little thing. Roth didn't peg one people to be worse than the other, either. She states that Eijeh found the Shotet to be horrible (she also basically states the Eijeh is a pussy, for the record). In fact, because this book has two voices, Roth was able to have both sides tell their story. I just really can't stand this world we live in where we have to take entertainment and try to twist it into some over the top political argument. To suggest that Roth is trying to sneak in racist references is absurd...and in my experience, a racist is pretty fucking blatant and doesn't waste time with hidden messages. I've also seen mention of rape triggers...and I literally laughed out loud. Rhyz trading memories with Cyra has been interpreted as rape and I. Just. Can't. How do people come up with these theories?! The only thing I will say is that making physical pain a "gift" kind of sucks. Millions of people live with 'invisible' physical pain every day, my mother included, and it is in no way a gift. Except for the occasional day off of work where you can lay on the couch in pain rather than sit at your desk in pain. Not fun. Roth wasn't making fun of physical pain in any way, so there's no reason to call her out on it - just worth mentioning as I've seen several people bring this up.

Circling back around - the book had potential - it didn't live up to that. The second book won't be high on my TBR for 2018. Two stars.