Book Review: Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)

About the Book:
Title: Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)
Author: Veronica Roth
Pub. Date: January 18, 2017
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 480
Rating:  2/5 stars

Synopsis:

In a galaxy powered by the current, everyone has a gift.

Cyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people. Cyra’s currentgift gives her pain and power — something her brother exploits, using her to torture his enemies. But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother’s hand: she is resilient, quick on her feet, and smarter than he knows.

Akos is the son of a farmer and an oracle from the frozen nation-planet of Thuvhe. Protected by his unusual currentgift, Akos is generous in spirit, and his loyalty to his family is limitless. Once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers, Akos is desperate to get this brother out alive — no matter what the cost.
The Akos is thrust into Cyra's world, and the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable. Will they help each other to survive, or will they destroy one another?

Review:

So I gave myself a long time after finishing this book before reviewing it for a specific reason. I wanted to see if it would stick with me. And it didn't. I actually lowered my rating for it because it's been about 2 months, and honestly, I can barely remember a thing about the story. Trust me, I wanted to be able to write a rave review about a new Veronica Roth book, but I can't. Not with this one. I know that there's a ton of controversy over this book right now, and I wasn't even aware of it until after I finished reading the book. But the thing is, I honestly didn't see any of the controversial things that people are talking about. There were a lot of problems with this book in my opinion and unfortunately I don't know how much more Veronica Roth I'm going to be reading after this.

Let's start with perhaps my biggest thing about this book...it's confusing as hell! I was literally wondering what was going on half the time because I was so lost. On top of this, it was slow. I'm talking like slower than a snail. When you put confusing and slow together it doesn't mean good things (as I'm sure you can imagine). It took me so long to get through this book because it wasn't holding my interest. And judging by the fact that I can't even remember the characters names after 2 months...it says a lot about how interested I actually was while reading. At first I was following the story pretty well, but once I got to a certain point in the story I found myself looking around and having no clue where I even was. It seemed like huge chunks of time were passing and apparently I had no idea. One second we were in one place and then suddenly we were somewhere else with entirely new characters. I get that this was told from multiple POVs, but that's not what I'm talking about. The changes were abrupt and made no sense whatsoever. 

I think one of the other big problems I had is the fact that it seemed so generic. Like there was nothing new or interesting to differentiate this from any other sci-fi book. There was a lot of this book that was boring and absolutely pointless, and at one point I ended up skipping a big chunk just to get through it faster. The action isn't written all that well, and I didn't feel connected to any of the characters. I felt like the characters and the world were just there, and Veronica Roth didn't feel it was necessary for us to understand anything about them. The world-building and descriptions were very lackluster, and honestly, it seemed like at a certain point while writing, Veronica Roth just stopped caring (which arguably I stopped caring too, so there's that). At this point, would it really surprise you if I said the ending was just as much of a mess as the rest of the story? Didn't think so... 

I will say, there was a lot of potential with this book. I mean the world could have been fascinating (as well as the characters), but everything about the story was just eh. I honestly wanted this to be a redemption book for Veronica Roth, but if it's possible...she actually did worse. If I really need to read some Veronica Roth, I'll just keep re-reading Divergent and Insurgent. 
                                         

Happy reading :)

~Cassie