#hushflower

[carvethemarkquotes]

Akos touched her face. When he first met her, he thought she was this fearsome thing, this monster he needed to escape. But she had unfurled bit by bit, showing him her wicked humor by waking him with a knife to his throat, talking about herself with unflinching honesty, for better or for worse, and loving--so deeply--every little bit of this galaxy, even the parts she was supposed to hate. She was not a rusty nail, as she had once told him, or a hot poker, or a blade in Ryzek’s hand. She was a hushflower, all power and possibility. Capable of doing good and harm in equal measure.

Carve the Mark, written by Veronica Roth

[snarktheater]

Carve the Mark — Part 4 (Chapters 26-29)

Last time, we concluded Part 3 of the book with both out protagonists imprisoned by the antagonist, who had discovered Cyra's plan to have him executed and that Akos had crucial information to take down his mortal enemy as predicted by his fate. How will our protagonists possibly get out of this one?

Well, if you answered "time skip to Akos waking up in a hospital in Thuvhe, safe and sound and with no idea how he got there" and expected that to be a good plot development…you might be Veronica Roth and I have no idea why you're reading this blog, although I guess I'm honored?

But yeah, that's what happens. Part 4 opens with Akos waking up from…coma? Anesthesia? At first, he's having trouble believing he even really is safe, but yeah, turns out he really made it to Thuvhe. Spoiler alert for the four chapters covered in this post: we never find out how he made it out. I mean, we do find out that Jorek is the one who broke him out, but we don't get any details as to how (or why he didn't also break Cyra out while he was at it, because he didn't).

Anyway, back to the present. Akos is in the hospital, as I mentioned, handcuffed to his bed and presumably recovering from torture. Ori's here, tells him he was "dropped" in the city of Shissa, drugged with hushflower to justify his lack of memories. The city, by the way, has only been mentioned twice in passing before as a place of snooty upperclass people, unlike Akos's small, down-to-earth home village of Hessa, I guess. Since all we're going to see of Shissa is this one hospital…I'm honestly not sure I should bother to paint a clearer picture than that.

Ori and Akos's reunion is a little stilted, considering they were friends and haven't seen each other for two years. It feels like 1) an infodump and 2) the book was running out of space for more. On the more positive side, Cisi comes in later, and she gets a more genuine moment with Akos.

“I’m crying,” she said. “What—I haven’t been able to cry since . . . since my currentgift.” “Your currentgift keeps you from crying?” “You didn’t notice it?” She sniffed, wiping her cheeks. “I make people feel . . . at ease. But I also can’t seem to do or say anything that makes them uneasy, like . . .” “Crying,” he supplied.

I guess we should start talking about this thing the book is doing with the currentgifts, since it's becoming an overt theme now. It's clear that the point is that Cyra wasn't the only one whose gift comes with a downside, but all gifts do. Which…I'm not sure how it applies to, say, Aoseh Kereseth's ability to break and mend objects, but it could be interesting.

I have yet to see what point, if any, the book is trying to make, or if it's just trying to make the gifts come with built-in character flaws/weakpoints. I can note that all four characters where we definitely know the downside to their abilities (Cyra, Cisi, Akos and Vas), that downside is that their gift has an effect on them that they can't control, which is interesting in and of itself, I guess. I do have to wonder about the gender dynamics at play here, though: Akos and Vas's gifts passively cut off their ability to experience something (the current and pain, respectively), while Cyra and Cisi's gifts affect them in a direct way (by causing pain and preventing Cisi to express her emotions). I can't really cry sexism, because honestly it's a subtle distinction that I'm sure could be argued any which way and we're only talking about four characters, but it is worth discussing and I hope someone, out there, is having that discussion. Someone other than the author, I mean.

Moving on. Cisi explains to Akos that, since he spent two years in Shotet and was found wearing Shotet armor (that…Ryzek never took from him during his time in jail?), the chancellor of Thuvhe (you know, Ori's sister, Isae) thinks he might be a traitor and spy, hence the handcuffing. And to Isae's credit, she's absolutely right to at least be suspicious, even if Ori and Cisi vouch for him, since neither of them has seen him for the past two years. It doesn't help that, as a protagonist in a YA novel, Akos just will not trust any authority figure ever.

“If you could just explain why you were with [Cyra]—” “I won’t explain. […] I stayed alive, and now this is what I am. Nothing I say to you is going to change what you’ve already assumed.” He was fourteen and irritable again.

Except he's not and has no reason to revert back to a moody teen.

Also, yeah, they know he was by Cyra's side by watching "hacked Shotet feed", but they conveniently can't access those now so Akos can find out if Cyra's still alive and what happened to her.

Enter Chancellor Isae herself, who has nothing better to do with her time because ruling a nation is no big deal or anything. Well, also, her currentgift is to summon people's memories by touching them, and she wants to use it on Akos to make sure he can't lie to her about his time in Shotet. Except, of course, Akos's gift blocks hers, so we're back to square one. And to Akos's credit, he does give Isae information about Ryzek's plan to kill her and Ori, he just doesn't mention his and Eijeh's involvement.

Also, Ori kind of sucks as Isae's body double. For multiple reasons. One, Akos can immediately tell who's who, because Ori wears the shoes of a village girl and Isae wears fancy shoes. Two, they have completely opposite postures.

Seeing them side by side, it was even more obvious how different they were. Ori was slouching, leaning, her face mobile. Isae was carved from rock.

Three, Isae has two giant scars on her face, so they have to wear veils over their faces at all times…except Ori never wears one in any of her scenes, so she doesn't strike me as too concerned with her or her sister's safety.

Anyway, after Isae postures some more about how Ryzek should be afraid of her, and a symbolic dream of Akos and Cyra's last moments together, we cut to the next morning, and Akos decides he's tired of staying in bed. Turns out, he could use his gift to disable his handcuff at any moment, and he decides to do that…and then just walks to the window and stares until nightfall. Um…okay?

Well, that means he spots a bunch of Shotet ships invading the city. Not that that changes anything, since Isae walks in his room almost immediately (are you sure this is the best use of her time in the midst of an invasion?), gives him back his armor and gear, and tells him to follow her out. And yeah, all his gear, including his poisons and the knife Cyra gave him (which the book had all but forgotten about a this point, but now tries to make relevant again?) were with him. At this point I just have to assume that Jorek not only broke him out of prison, but also stole back all his equipment while he was at it, meaning Ryzek's security system is unbreachable when it comes to his own person and shitty everywhere else.

Cisi's here too, and they make their way out together. By which I mean they immediately run into soldiers, Akos tries to use his status in Shotet society to bluff his way past them by claiming he's been sent to kidnap Cisi and Isae. It fails, and doubly so, since one of the soldiers decides to kill him and kidnap Cisi and Isae himself to get a reward (because…insubordination gets rewarded in Shotet?), and another of the soldiers actually recognizes Akos. Well, it doesn't matter, since Akos kills the first one, and the rest of the soldiers just run away, and that's their only obstacle on the way to the hospital, where they board a floater and leave the city.

It's like this book can only have super easy obstacles dispatched near-instantly (like Suzao) or insurmountable ones that the protagonists are doomed to fall to (like the lock on Ryzek's room), there's no in-between, and which is which depends entirely on the needs of the plot and nothing else.

“Steward of the family Noavek?” Isae said. […] “I still don’t trust you,” she said, but she put her knife down. “Let’s go.”

At least I finally have a character I can relate to in this book. Even if the book maybe wants me to dislike her?

Meanwhile, Cisi's shocked that her brother killed someone, which…makes sense, but still irks me, mostly because it feels like a repeat of Akos's own angst and brings the pacing down at a time where it should be picking up and cutting out the padding. The scene does read as genuine, so…maybe I just can't bring myself to care about a character's angst when she's been in, like, four chapters total out of thirty. On the plus side, Isae cuts it short, probably because she's as tired of this angst as I am and/or is secretly me.

You may have noticed that one named character has been conspicuously absent from this whole scene, and as morning approaches, they find out that yep, Ori has been taken prisoner by the Shotet. Because of course she has.

“Well,” Isae said at last. “I’ll just have to go get her, then.”

Again…isn't there literally anyone else who could take care of this? A military, the Assembly? You're the leader of the country, and you know Ryzek is looking to kill you and your sister personally and is only waiting to figure out which of you is which twin to do so, and you'll just…take the bait?

Turns out: yes, that's exactly what she'll do. I have no idea how the Thuvhesit government works exactly, but they don't even bring up the possibility of her using her power as chancellor to get any support. Instead, they fly to the Kereseth family home in Hessa, stay the night there, and leave for Shotet first thing in the morning.

Okay, I am skipping a good chunk of a chapter that is actually spent there, but it's mostly Akos angsting about the life he's lost, about his mother not being there because she's in an "oracle meeting", and Isae convincing Akos to help her at all (by promising to take Eijeh as well as Ori). Also, Cisi decides to come along, so that they'll die together or not at all. No, really, that's her argument; she doesn't even try to suggest she might be useful in any way. But then she has the gall to say she's not taking death lightly because she had to burn her father's body by herself after he died and Eijeh and Akos were captured. Sure, I believe that.

Oh, we also learn that Isae got the scars on her face and lost her mother when she ran into Shotet during a scavenge on Othyr, who…robbed them, I guess? And she goes on to say the scavenge isn't as peaceful as the Shotet claim it is.

For some reason, [Akos] wanted to tell her about where Othyrian medical aid went—to Ryzek’s supporters only—and how few people knew about it. But it really wasn’t a good time to explain Shotet to her, especially not if she would think he was excusing the soldier for stealing medicine and scarring her face.

I'm…not really sure what the point is, here. Akos is trying to make a #NotAllShotet argument, which is actually fair enough because the Shotet people are mostly victims of their own regime, but…Isae hasn't really stated that all Shotet were violent or anything similar. She just stated that the scavenge isn't always peaceful, which, given what we know of Shotet society, seems fairly likely.

This, of course, brings us back to the muddled metaphor that the Shotet represent. I mean, they're a diaspora people, but they're also a totalitarian regime, and now they're also…unfairly maligned by Isae as some kind of metaphor for racism or xenophobia? Maybe? None of these metaphors really work, and maybe I'm just projecting them on a text that just didn't want to be a metaphor for anything? It's just weird.

Also, now that Isae's opening up to Akos, this happens:

Isae had lapsed into some other, more casual diction. Even her posture had changed, spine bent.

Is this supposed to be character/relationship development? Because…it's not.

Anyway, they fly over the Divide with a spare floater (that they totally have somehow), run out of fuel just as they reach the end of it, land, and immediately run into an Armored One, the beasts that Akos crafted his armor from. It doesn't do anything, it's literally just sleeping, so I think it's here purely so the book could infodump about them.

“The current drives Armored Ones into mad rages,” he whispered right against the creature, which had gone to sleep, much as it defied logic. He took a slow step back. “That’s why they attack people, because we’re such good channels for the current.” […] “But,” Isae said, sounding strained, “you don’t channel the current, so.” “So they hardly know I’m there,” he replied. “Come on.”

Yeah, turns out Akos could kill an Armored One because he was basically invisible to them. Did we know this? I can't be bothered to go back and check.

This is where we find out that, while Akos plans to take them to Jorek, as the only Shotet he trusts to ask for help, he hasn't shared that plan with either Isae or Cisi. And they followed him anyway, because…? Didn't Isae repeat multiple times that she wasn't an idiot and didn't trust him? Good thing he just happens not to be a spy, right?

They make it to Jorek's home, in a "hidden village", and Akos meets Jorek's mom, Ara Kuzar. Technically, they have seen each other before, since she was in the audience when Akos killed her husband. But as you may remember, she's cool with that, so she invites them in, without even asking who is traveling with him. And similarly, Isae still doesn't wonder who this woman is. At least she uses the alias "Badha" instead of her real name, I guess?

Fast forward a bit, Jorek comes home with Teka. And…oh yeah, Akos doesn't even know who Teka is, or Cyra's involvement with the renegades! I'm so glad you decided to keep all that from him so we had to slog through an infodump now! Thanks, book!

“Why . . .” Akos shook his head. “Why would Cyra do this [ask the renegades to get Akos out of Shotet]?” “You know why,” Teka said. “What’s the only thing more important to her than her fear of her brother?” When he didn’t answer, she sighed. Exasperated, clearly. “You, of course, have that singular honor.”

Akos, funnily enough, doesn't even comment on that, not even in narration. Because of course. But I'm glad it's out of the way, maybe the book will actually move forward with their romantic teasing now.

With that out of the way, we learn that Cyra is still alive, but she's been sentenced to execution by "nemhalzak". Basically, a chunk of her face was flayed then patched up so she doesn't die immediately, and she's stripped of her rank in Shotet society, meaning anyone can challenge her in the arena. And someone does, every day, until she dies. Lovely, right? Well, Jorek expects she won't last much longer, so they have to break her out fast.

Luckily, Akos immediately comes up with a plan once he confirms that Jorek still has the ship that Jorek used to take him all the way to Shissa. It's a "fast, stealthy" ship, too, so…even better.

So they spend the night, and meet more renegades from the village, Sovy, one of Ara's friend, and Kyo, one of Jorek's. I'll skip over the banter, though I will note that the book is hinting at Isae and Cisi being either very close friends or maybe even romantically involved. Which I would be fine with if it happened.

Also, on a less positive note, this:

Jyo, who wasn’t much older than them, with eyes that looked a lot like Isae’s, suggesting some common ancestor.

Also, that sounds vaguely racist, because you just know what focusing on the eyes and "ancestry" means. You're not fooling anyone.

Jyo also tells Isae about other renegades who smuggle things into Shotet, mostly food and medicine, and I'm not sure where that's going, but it feels like it might be relevant, so…there you go.

Let's just cut to Cyra's point of view he next morning. As we learned, one side of her face was flayed, and while they used special "stitching cloth" to patch it up, her wound is way more severe than what that's meant to heal and it's still bleeding. And it's been days, presumably. You know, I'm pretty that if you don't stop a wound from bleeding within hours, you'll just bleed out, regardless of how much you've slowed the bleeding.

We also learn that her currentshadows have changed too, which was hinted at in Akos's PoV. They're now over her skin, instead of being in her veins, and she has more control over them than before, as we saw during the torture scene. They still cause her pain, but less so than before, so…yay?

Eijeh comes to taunt her while she eats breakfast, because I guess he and Ryzek have exchanged enough memories that he wants to taunt her now? Also, he knows she won't kill him because she's in love with his brother. It's mostly just banter, and Ryzek comes in to taunt her as well, so…what, is it just here to show how much Eijeh has changed?

When I walked past Ryzek on my way out of the cell, I leaned closer and said, “But you would be in a much better mood if your little plan to steal Eijeh’s currentgift had worked.”

You know, I still have no idea why you even had that plot point about stealing Eijeh's gift if he never actually does it. We're reaching the three quarters mark here, if it doesn't happen soon, it's not going to matter much. Why not just use the memory transfer as a way to control Eijeh without having Ryzek hope to steal his gift?

Anyway. Cyra's opponent of the day is Vas, because of course it is, and Ryzek expects her to die today. Also, Ryzek's the one handing her a weapon for the duel, so…of course she grabs him instead and uses her gift on him. Like…what did he expect?

In retaliation, he doesn't give her a weapon at all.

I had no weapon. But it was better to go out this way. By not giving me a currentblade, Ryzek had just shown everyone in this arena that he wasn’t giving me a fair chance. In his anger, he had shown fear, and that was enough for me.

I kind of like this, even though, again, it feels like a tangent. But at least it shows Cyra's quick thinking better than…the rest of the book.

The fight doesn't go well for Cyra, but luckily, it doesn't matter. Pretty quickly into her duel with Vas, Akos literally rappels into the arena from Jorek's floater. He struggles with Vas for a bit, and Akos's gift neutralizes Vas, causing him to feel pain for the first time in years, which disables him long enough for Akos and Cyra to escape back onto the airship. And…yeah, apparently there was no other security around, except for a force field around the arena that Akos also disables with his gift. Wow, that was easy.

And so we end this chapter on a…sweet reunion?

“Eijeh was in the amphitheater, he was right there. You could have grabbed him. Why didn’t you—” His mouth—still under my fingers—twitched into a smile. “Because I came for you, you idiot.” I laughed and fell against him, not strong enough to stand anymore.

Just fucking kiss already. Like, with no angst afterwards. I'm getting bored of your indecisiveness.

[freebooksdownloadpdf]

Carve the Mark – Veronica Roth HUSHFLOWERS ALWAYS BLOOMED WHEN the night was longest. The whole city celebrated the day the bundle of petals peeled apart into rich red—partly because hushflowers were their nation’s lifeblood, and partly, Akos thought, to keep them all from going crazy in the cold.

[reviewsandrecaps]

Recap: Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)

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?

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Characters: Akos Kereseth His currentgift cancels out other peoples' currentgifts. He can touch Cyra without feeling pain, and touching her takes away her pain. He was kidnapped with his brother, Eijeh, and taken to the Noaveks. Ryzek gives Akos to Cyra to help with her pain. Cyra Noavek Her currentgift causes other people excruciating pain. It also hurts her. She accidentally killed her mother with her currentgift when she was younger. Her brother, Ryzek, uses her to hurt and intimidate people. Eijeh Kereseth Akos's older brother. Ryzek had him kidnapped for his currentgift. He's an oracle; he can see the future. Ryzek wants to use him to achieve the path he wants. When Eijeh doesn't work with him willingly, Ryzek starts trading his memories with Eijeh's. Ryzek believes that who you are determines what your currentgitft will be, and your memories make up who you are. Ryzek's plan doesn't seem to work, but Eijeh becomes more like Ryzek and Ryzek becomes more like Eijeh. Ryzek Noavek Crya's brother. Leader of the Shotet. With his currentgift, he can exchange his memories with other peoples'. He trades his bad memories for other peoples' good memories. Vas Kazur Ryzek's right hand man. His currentgift makes him immune to pain. Akos killed him. Teka Surukta Renegade. She can manipulate things that runs on current. Zosita Surukta Renegade. Teka's mother. Yma's sister. After the renegades attacked the sojourn ship, Zosita sacrificed herself to Ryzek so he wouldn't execute an innocent person. Yma Zetsyvis Her name was originally Surukta. She's Zosita's sister and Teka's aunt. Ori Benesit Akos and Eijeh's best friend. Isae's twin sister. Killed by Ryzek through Eijeh. Isae Benesit Ori's twin sister. Chancellor of Thuvhe. In a relationship with Cisi.  Cisi Kereseth Akos's older sister. Her currentgift influences peoples' emotions. In a relationship with Isae. Sifa Akos's mother. Oracle.  Otega Cyra's old tutor. She can find people by touching something that belonged to them. Lazmet Noavek Cyra's father. He was Leader of the Shotet before he was supposedly killed during a sojourn. Lazmet is alive somewhere. Ryzek knows where. Ylira Noavek Cyra's mother. Cyra killed her on accident. Aoseh Akos's father. He's killed by Vas before Akos and Eijeh are kidnapped.

Recap: Akos is at school when he hears a commotion in the hall. Ori's aunt comes and takes her away, saying the fate-favored are in danger. Ori, Akos and Eijeh's best friend, asks about the Kereseths – Akos and his siblings who are also fate-favored. Ori's aunt says Ori especially is in danger. Akos didn't know she was fate-favored. He realizes she's been using a fake name. Cisi pulls Akos out of class next. They go to the headmaster's office to wait for their father, Aoseh. When he gets there, he tells them the Assembly announced the fates of the favored. He doesn't know where their mother is. When they get home, there are three Shotet soldiers waiting for them. They speak, and though Aoseh can't understand them, Akos can. Vas Kuzar, one of the soldiers, realizes Akos can understand them. Akos can understand Shotet because he has Shotet blood. Aoseh gets a knife from one of the soldiers and stabs Vas Kuzar. It doesn't deter him; he can't feel pain. Vas kills Aoseh. The soldiers take Eijeh and Akos.

Ryzek comes to Cyra. He gives Cyra a painful memory of their father, Lazmet. Lazmet makes Ryzek give an order to have a traitor executed slowly. Ryzek is scared, but he gives the order. Ryzek trades the memory of the execution with one of Cyra's memories – her first scavenge. She feels violated. She feels physical pain. Ryzek touches her, and when he touches her he feels pain – her currentgift presenting itself. 

The pain becomes part of Cyra's life. Her mother, Ylira, takes her to a doctor. Dr. Fadlan says Cyra's gift might have developed early as a defense mechanism. He says the gift comes from Cyra, that if she changes the gift will change too. Ylira dies a season later. Lazmet dies a few seasons later. 

Otega tells Cyra about the Kereseth brothers. She says Ryzek sent Vas to capture an oracle. Vas and his men brought the brothers. Cyra sees Ryzek meeting the brothers. Ryzek says Akos's fate is to die serving the Noavek family. Eijeh's fate is to be the next oracle. Ryzek wants Eijeh to find the version of the future he wants and tell him how to get there. Eijeh has never had a vision; he doesn't know where to begin. Ryzek is going to torture him until he's useful. Cyra hears Eijeh screaming that night.

A few seasons later, Vas comes to Cyra. Ryzek wants her to join him and some guests for dinner. When the dinner is over and people get up to leave, Ryzek stops Uzul and his family. Ryzek says Uzul's wife, Yma, told him she found coordinates when she was going through his contact history. She remembered him talking about the exile colony. If Uzul contacted them, it'd be treason. Ryzek makes Cyra torture him. Uzul says he tried to find the exiles because he wanted to find a life away from Ryzek's tyranny. He heard they were on Zold, but his contact fell through. He gave up when he couldn't find anything. Ryzek makes Cyra torture him as punishment.

Ryzek brings Akos to Cyra's room. Cyra always feels worse after Ryzek makes her use her gift. Ryzek wants Akos to use his gift on Cyra. When Cyra touches Akos, the pain disappears. Akos's gift interrupts the current; it stops other gifts. Ryzek leaves Akos with her.

The next morning, Akos brings Cyra pain medicine made from hushflowers. She takes it. It works. He says he'll teach her to make it if she teaches him to fight. She agrees to do it.

Cyra sees on the news that Uzul is dead. It says he killed himself. Cyra gets a note from Lety, Uzul's daughter. Lety blames Cyra for Uzul's death. 

The Sojourn Festival begins. Cyra shows Akos how the Shotet decide where to scavenge. They follow the current to other planets, land, and scavenge. They find things other planets have discarded and give them new life. She shows him the Examiners, who study the current to decide where they should scavenge. They hear the Examiners talking about Ryzek wanting them to study Pitha. There are rumors about advanced weapons hidden on Pitha. Cyra thinks Ryzek wants to claim them so he can gain control over the planet, not just the Shotet people.

Akos asks Cyra to take him to the festival. She sneaks him out into the city.

That night, Akos drugs Cyra. When she wakes up, Akos is gone. A guard tells Cyra that Akos was caught trying to escape with his brother. Ryzek is furious. Cyra was the one who showed Akos how to sneak out. Ryzek says he's going to take Eijeh's currentgift. A gift is determined by who a person is. Ryzek wants to use his own gift to trade his memories with Eijeh's until Eijeh's gift becomes his own. He starts trading memories. He looks shaken afterward. He tells Akos he's going to keep trading memories until there's nothing of Eijeh left.

Akos later asks Cyra if there's any way to reverse what Ryzek is doing to Eijeh. Cyra says there isn't, unless Ryzek willingly gives the memories back. 

Cyra and Akos go to the sojourn ship. Ryzek is there with Eijeh. Eijeh barely seems to recognize Akos. Eijeh has a vision. There's going to be a public act of defiance. He tells Ryzek to let it happen because he can use it to his advantage.

On the last night of the Sojourn Festival, they wait for the last few vessels to join them before they feast on the sojourn ship together. Lety Zetsyvis, Uzul's daughter, is there. She says Ryzek's fate, that he will fall to the Benesit family, in front of everyone. She says he's going to fail them all. Ryzek says the fate was a lie told by people who want to destroy them. Cyra thinks this is the act of defiance Eijeh foresaw. He asks who made her believe those lies, asks if it was the same people who murdered her father. He says they have to protect themselves against the lies. He says instead of killing her, he's giving her the chance to fight for her life in the arena. Cyra will be her opponent. 

Before the fight, Akos asks what Ryzek is holding over Cyra. Cyra tells Akos how her mother died. She was young and she threw a tantrum. She pushed all the light and pain into her mother and it killed her. She tells him Ryzek is holding their mother's death over her.

The fight in the arena is over quickly. Cyra pushes all the pain into Lety and she dies. She leaves the arena and Akos comforts her.

That night, Cyra gives Akos her arm so he can add Lety's mark. She always keeps her arm covered and he's surprised that it's covered in marks, but not kills marks. She says she keeps a record of pain, not kills. Each mark is for someone Ryzek made her hurt. 

Ryzek tells Cyra he followed Uzul's confession to the source. There's a colony of exiles, maybe more than one, and they have contacts among the Shotet. The thought gives Cyra hope. Ryzek needs Cyra's help to ensure there's no doubt he's in command. He shows her the fates of the Benesit children. One of them is fated to reign over Thuvhe. He thinks this is the child that will be responsible for his undoing. He wants to kill her before that happens. Cyra doesn't believe he'll be able to change his fate. He says she'll help him. She refuses.

Akos is training in the public training room. He sees Jorek Kuzar watching him. Jorek offers to spar with him. When they're done, Jorek says his father, Suzao Kuzar, was wrong about Akos. Jorek's father was there when Akos and Eijeh were taken, when their father was killed. Jorek says his father is the worst kind of person. He asks Akos to kill him. He says his mother and sister are in danger and he isn't skilled enough to fight him off himself. In exchange, Jorek says he can get Eijeh out. Akos agrees to do it.

Akos asks Cyra how he should kill Suzao Kuzar. She says it would need to be in the arena to be legal. He'll have to wait until after the scavenge. She says he should provoke Suzao into challenging him. 

All the lights go out and Cyra is attacked by a girl wearing a mask. Over the ship's loud speaker, she hears someone saying the first child of the family Noavek will fall to the family Benesit. The voice says the truth can't be erased. Cyra lets the girl go. She keeps a knife the girl dropped. She goes to Ryzek. The girl wasn't alone. He says Vas killed two renegades who tried to enter his part of the ship.

Ryzek announces that people will be picked at random and interrogated to root out the renegades. He's postponing the sojourn until they find them. 

Cyra goes to a gathering of Ryzek's. Yma Zetsyvis, Lety's mother and Uzul's wife, is there. Yma tells Cyra that some low-level renegades have been found as a result of the interrogations, but no key players. Yma says Ryzek wants to find a key player, punish them publicly, show strength before the sojourn. If he can't find anyone, he'll frame someone. Cyra doesn't like the idea of an innocent person dying. 

Cyra goes to see Otega. She tells her about the renegade who attacked her. She gives Otega the girl's knife and asks her to find her. Otega agrees to help. 

Otega leads Cyra to the renegade's room. The girl's name is Teka Surukta. Cyra tells Teka that Ryzek is going to kill an innocent person if the interrogations don't yield results. She asks her to produce a name. Teka leads Cyra to her mother, Zosita Surukta. Zosita says she'll take responsibility for the attack. 

Jorek comes to Akos to pick up a sleeping potion. Akos's plan is to have Jorek drug Suzao, embarrass him, and then take responsibility for the drugging after the scavenge so Suzao will challenge him.

Vas and Eijeh come to Akos. Eijeh has some mannerisms that Akos recognizes from Ryzek. He speaks more like a Shotet than like a Thuvhesit. He's confused about his memories. Eijeh says he needs Akos to make a potion for him that promotes clear thinking. He thinks it'll help with his visions. Akos refuses. Vas says Akos is going to be a witness at the interrogation of a confessed renegade. Cyra will be there too. He goes. Ryzek is questioning Cyra about how she found Zosita. He asks Zosita where she's been hiding. Ryzek wants Cyra to torture her. She refuses. Ryzek beats Akos until Cyra agrees to torture Zosita. Akos passes out. Cyra gets him back to her room after the interrogation. She kisses him.

Zosita's execution is the next day. Afterward, the sojourn begins. Akos and Cyra are going in Ryzek's sojourn craft with a few others. Before they leave, Cyra speaks to Teka. She wants to meet the rest of the renegades. Teka agrees to set something up. 

On Pitha, Cyra, Akos, Ryzek, and his posse meet with Pithar dignitaries. Ryzek wants to form a military alliance with them. He wants their help in destroying Thuvhe. 

Cyra and Akos see on the news that Thuvhe has a new chancellor. Ori and her twin sister are on the screen. Akos didn't know she had a twin. After the fates were released, he realized she was going by an alias. The news says their names are Isae and Orieve Benesit. He tells Cyra he knows Ori.

Ryzek is successful in making an alliance with Pitha. The sojourn ends and the ship is returning home. Akos confesses to poisoning Suzao. Suzao challenges Akos to a fight to the death in the arena.

Teka leads Cyra to a group of renegades. Cyra says she wants safe transport out of Shotet for Akos. One of the renegades, Tos, says they would want her help getting into Noavek manor in return. She knows they want to assassinate Ryzek. She agrees. 

Cyra goes to Akos's arena challenge. Suzao underestimates Akos. Akos kills him.

Jorek comes to see Akos a few days later. Jorek says he'll get Eijeh out when they land in Voa. He gives Akos a gift from his mother, a ring. Jorek says his family is safe and asks Akos to come and visit them sometime. After he leaves, Akos asks Cyra to carve Suzao's mark on his arm. He kisses her. 

Cyra tells Teka she should kill Ryzek the next day, after they land. She says she wants them to get Akos out simultaneously.

The next day, Cyra lets the renegades into Noavek manor and leads them to Ryzek's room. Jorek helps them. They can't get the door to Ryzek's room open. They run. Cyra sends Teka to get Akos. Cyra stays to fight the guards.

Cyra is in prison. Ryzek knows that Akos knows the Thuvhesit chancellor. Cyra realizes Akos didn't make it out. Ryzek says he has to kill the Benesit sisters in a particular order for the best outcome, but he doesn't know which is which because they're twins. He thinks Akos will know. Vas brings Eijeh and Akos. They've been starving Akos, so his currentgift is weak. They make Cyra torture him. She starts hallucinating. Cyra sees Akos. He says that every currentgift carries a curse, but no gift is only a curse. She thinks the gift is the strength the curse has given her. She thinks she can bear it. She forces the pain away from Akos, back into herself.

Akos feels the pain slipping away. He's lost consciousness. He sees Ori. She says his sister, Cisi, is coming. 

Akos wakes up in a hospital. Ori is there. Akos was dropped in Shissa, a Thuvhe city. Ori says she isn't the chancellor; her twin is. He's worried about Cyra. Cisi comes to see him. She tells him he's handcuffed to the hospital bed because he was wearing Shotet armor when he was dropped off. The chancellor doesn't trust him. Ori comes back with her sister. Akos sees that Isae's face is badly scarred. She keeps it covered with a veil. Isae's currentgift can summon memories with a touch. She wants to use it on Akos, but it won't work. She questions him about Ryzek then leaves. 

Isae comes to Akos with Cisi. She tells him he's getting her out of there. The lights go out in the hall and they hear screaming. They run into some Shotet soldiers, but they make it out. On the news, Akos sees that a Benesit twin was taken captive by the Shotet soldiers – Ori. Isae says she's going get her back. 

They go to Akos's family's house. His mom isn't there. Cisi says she's at an oracle meeting and that she'll be back in a few days. Isae says they should leave ASAP to find Ori. Akos says he isn't taking her to Ryzek. She says if he helps her get Ori out, she'll help him get Eijeh out. He agrees to do it.

They leave the next morning. Cisi comes with them. Akos takes them to Jorek's family's house. Ara, Jorek's mother, welcomes them. Akos asks about Cyra. Teka is there and says Cyra won't last long; they've been trying to figure out a way to break her out. Teka fills him in on what Cyra was doing before she got caught: working with the renegades, trying to help them assassinate Ryzek. He asks what Ryzek has done to her. Ryzek is going to have her executed by nemhalzak. Her status will be eliminated and anyone can challenge her to a fight in the arena. She's injured and weak. 

Ryzek has Eijeh take Cyra to the arena. She's facing Vas. Ryzek tells Vas to kill her. Vas is overpowering her when Akos drops into the arena. He touches Vas, makes him feel pain. Vas lets him go. Akos gets Cyra and grabs a rope the renegades dropped that's attached to a transport vessel. It takes off. They escape.

On the transport vessel, Cisi and Akos tend to Cyra's wounds. They hide the transport vessel in a part of the city Ryzek isn't familiar with. Cyra sees Isae, knows who she is. She guesses Isae came for Ori. Cyra doesn't know where Ori's being kept, but she knows Ryzek will have to move her eventually. She says that's when they should make their move. She thinks Ryzek's going to publicly execute Ori to lure Isae out.

Cyra tells Akos that something changed when Ryzek made her interrogate him. Her gift isn't as painful and she can control it sometimes.

A Thuvhesit ship lands in the renegade's hideout. Akos's mom, Sifa, comes out of the ship. She tells them about three visions she's had. In the first, they leave the hideout before daybreak to avoid being found. In the second, Ryzek stands before a large crowd in an amphitheater. Jorek says there's going to be a ceremony honoring a platoon of soldiers the next day. In the third vision, Sifa sees Ori struggling against Vas in a cell made of glass. Cyra says it's beneath the amphitheater. The renegades don't know that Isae is the chancellor. They know Ori is the sister of the chancellor, but they only care about unseating Ryzek. Cyra says saving Ori will be an opportunity to take away Ryzek's moment of triumph. She says she'll challenge him to the arena in front of an audience. Akos says while she's challenging Ryzek, he and Isae will go after Ori.

Akos asks Cyra to spare Ryzek's life. He doesn't want Eijeh's memories to die with Ryzek. Cyra refuses. 

Cyra asks Sifa about Yma Zetsyvis. Sifa says her name was originally Surukta, the same as Teka and Zosita. Cyra leaves the hideout and goes to the Zetsyvis house. She finds Yma. She says she knows Zosita was her sister. She knows Yma has been part of the revolt for a long time. Yma stays close to Ryzek so she can take her revenge. Yma says her husband, Uzul, was sick. He sacrificed himself for the cause. Cyra tells Yma that the renegades are moving against Ryzek the next day. She gives Yma poison to give to Ryzek the next morning. 

Akos, Cisi, Teka, and Isae get into the prison under the amphitheater. Ori isn't there. 

Cyra goes into the amphitheater, into the arena. She challenges Ryzek in front of everyone. She can see that Eijeh warned him. She doesn't believe he'll actually fight her. She tells him she had him poisoned that morning. 

Vas finds Akos and the others. Akos kills Vas.

When Ryzek speaks again, it's with Eijeh's voice. Eijeh is on the platform with Ori. Ryzek says if Cyra doesn't give him an antidote, Ori will die. She says there isn't an antidote, a lie. Ryzek collapses and Eijeh stabs Ori. 

The crowd is in chaos. Isae goes to the platform. Ori is dead. Isae tries to strangle Eijeh, but Akos stops her. The renegade ship comes. Akos sees Cyra struggling to get Ryzek's body on the ship. He realizes she didn't kill him.

Isae is furious that Cyra didn't tell Ryzek the truth to save Ori. Cyra doesn't apologize; if she'd told Ryzek the truth, they'd all be dead.

They lock Eijeh and Ryzek up on the ship. Cyra confronts Sifa about lying to them. Sifa knew Ori wouldn't be in the cell, knew Akos would have to kill Vas. Sifa says her husband needed to be avenged. 

Cyra goes to see Ryzek. He's awake. He tells her she isn't a Noavek. His father isn't her father. He tells her his father, Lazmet Noavek, is still alive. 

Eijeh has been unresponsive. Akos wonders what Ori's touch did to him. He never knew her gift. 

Isae says they're going to Assembly Headquarters. She wants the Assembly to know she's alive, and she wants Eijeh and Ryzek to be imprisoned there. 

Sifa says she sees war in every future. There's no avoiding it.

[honourhasnoplaceinsurvival]

Is it me or do you guys also picture hushflowers as Roses 😂 but a very hybrid ROSA, gone under so much harsh environment to be a medicine, as well as a poison.

[krissysbookshelf]

Enjoy An Exclusive Sneek Peek of: Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth!

In a galaxy where everyone develops a currentgift—a unique power meant to shape the future—most benefit from their currentgift. But Akos and Cyra do not—their gifts make them vulnerable to others’ control. Cyra is the sister of a brutal tyrant. Cyra’s currentgift gives her pain and power—something her brother exploit to torture his enemies. But Cyra is much more than just a weapon in her brother's hand: she is resilient and smarter than he knows. Akos is protected by his unusual currentgift, but when Akos and his brother are captured by enemy soldiers, he is desperate to get his brother out at any cost. When Akos is thrust into Cyra’s world, the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable. They must decide to help each other to survive—or to destroy one another.  

LEARN MORE

    CHAPTER 1 | AKOS

  HUSHFLOWERS ALWAYS BLOOMED WHEN the night was longest. The whole city celebrated the day the bundle of petals peeled apart into rich red—partly because hushflowers were their nation’s lifeblood, and partly, Akos thought, to keep them all from going crazy in the cold.

That evening, on the day of the Blooming ritual, he was sweating into his coat as he waited for the rest of the family to be ready, so he went out to the courtyard to cool off. The Kereseth house was built in a circle around a furnace, all the outermost and innermost walls curved. For luck, supposedly.

Frozen air stung his eyes when he opened the door. He yanked his goggles down, and the heat from his skin fogged up the glass right away. He fumbled for the metal poker with his gloved hand and stuck it under the furnace hood.The burnstones under it just looked like black lumps before friction lit them, and then they sparked in different colors, depending on what they were dusted with.

The burnstones scraped together and lit up bright red as blood. They weren’t out here to warm anything, or light anything—they were just supposed to be a reminder of the current. As if the hum in Akos’s body wasn’t enough of a reminder. The current flowed through every living thing, and showed itself in the sky in all different colors. Like the burnstones. Like the lights of the floaters that zoomed overhead on their way to town proper. Off-worlders who thought their planet was blank with snow had never actually set foot on it.

Akos’s older brother, Eijeh, poked his head out. “Eager to freeze, are you? Come on, Mom’s nearly ready.”

It always took their mom longer to get ready when they were going to the temple.After all, she was the oracle. Everybody would be staring right at her.

Akos put the poker down and stepped inside, popping the goggles off his eyes and pulling his face shield down to his throat.

His dad and his older sister, Cisi, were standing by the front door, stuffed into their warmest coats. They were all made of the same material—kutyah fur, which didn’t take dye, so it was always white gray—and hooded.

“All ready then, Akos? Good.” His mom was fastening her own coat closed. She eyed their dad’s old boots. “Somewhere out there, your father’s ashes are collectively shuddering at how dirty your shoes are, Aoseh.”

“I know, that’s why I fussed about dirtying them up,” their dad said with a grin at their mom.

“Good,” she said. Almost chirped it, in fact. “I like them this way.”

“You like anything my father didn’t like.”

“That’s because he didn’t like anything.”

“Can we get into the floater while it’s still warm?” Eijeh said, a little bit of a whine in his voice. “Ori’s waiting for us by the memorial.”

Their mom finished with her coat, and put on her face shield. Down the heated front walk they bobbed, all fur and goggle and mitten. A squat, round ship waited for them, hovering at knee height just above the snowbank. The door opened at their mom’s touch and they piled in. Cisi and Eijeh had to yank Akos in by both arms because he was too small to climb on his own. Nobody bothered with safety belts.

“To the temple!” their dad cried, his fist in the air. He always said that when they went to the temple. Sort of like cheering for a boring lecture or a long line on voting day.

“If only we could bottle that excitement and sell it to all of Thuvhe. Most of them I see just once a year, and then only because there’s food and drink waiting for them,” their mom drawled with a faint smile.

“There’s your solution, then,” Eijeh said. “Entice them with food all season long.”

“The wisdom of children,” their mom said, poking the ignition button with her thumb.

The floater jerked them up and forward, so they all fell into each other. Eijeh punched Akos away from him, laughing.

The lights of Hessa twinkled up ahead. Their city wrapped around a hill, the military base at the bottom, the temple at the top, and all the other buildings in between. The temple, where they were headed, was a big stone structure with a dome—made of hundreds of panes of colored glass—right in the middle of it. When the sun shone on it, Hessa’s peak glowed orange red.Which meant it almost never glowed.

The floater eased up the hill, drifting over stony Hessa, as old as their nation-planet—Thuvhe, as everyone but their enemies called it, a word so slippery off-worlders tended to choke on it. Half the narrow houses were buried in snowdrifts. Nearly all of them were empty. Everybody who was anybody was going to the temple tonight.

“See anything interesting today?” their dad asked their mom as he steered the floater away from a particularly tall windmeter poking up into the sky. It was spinning in circles.

Akos knew by the tone of his dad’s voice that he was asking their mom about her visions. Every planet in the galaxy had three oracles: one rising; one sitting, like their mother; and one falling. Akos didn’t quite understand what it meant, except that the current whispered the future in his mom’s ears, and half the people they came across were in awe of her.

“I may have spotted your sister the other day—” their mom started. “Doubt she’d want to know, though.”

“She just feels the future ought to be handled with the appropriate respect for its weight.”

Their mom’s eyes swept over Akos, Eijeh, and Cisi in turn.

“This is what I get for marrying into a military family, I guess,” she said eventually. “You want everything to be regulated, even my currentgift.”

“You’ll notice that I flew in the face of family expectation and chose to be a farmer, not a military captain,” their dad said. “And my sister doesn’t mean anything by it, she just gets nervous, that’s all.”

“Hmm,” their mom said, like that wasn’t all.

Cisi started humming, a melody Akos had heard before, but couldn’t say from where. His sister was looking out the window, not paying attention to the bickering. And a few ticks later, his parents’ bickering stopped, and the sound of her hum was all that was left. Cisi had a way about her, their dad liked to say. An ease.

The temple was lit up, inside and out, strings of lanterns no bigger than Akos’s fist hanging over the arched entrance. There were floaters everywhere, strips of colored light wrapped around their fat bellies, parked in clusters on the hillside or swarming around the domed roof in search of a space to touch down. Their mom knew all the secret places around the temple, so she pointed their dad toward a shadowed nook next to the refectory, and led them in a sprint to a side door that she had to pry open with both hands.

They went down a dark stone hallway, over rugs so worn you could see right through them, and past the low, candlelit memorial for the Thuvhesits who had died in the Shotet invasion, before Akos was born.

He slowed to look at the flickering candles as he passed the memorial. Eijeh grabbed his shoulders from behind, making Akos gasp, startled. He blushed as soon as he realized who it was, and Eijeh poked his cheek, laughing, “I can tell how red you are even in the dark!”

“Shut up!” Akos said.

“Eijeh,” their mom chided. “Don’t tease.”

She had to say it all the time. Akos felt like he was always blushing about something.

“It was just a joke. …”

They found their way to the middle of the building, where a crowd had formed outside the Hall of Prophecy. Everyone was stomping their way out of their outer boots, shrugging off coats, fluffing hair that had been flattened by hoods, breathing warm air on frozen fingers.The Kereseths piled their coats, goggles, mittens, boots, and face coverings in a dark alcove, right under a purple window with the Thuvhesit character for the current etched into it. Just as they were turning back to the Hall of Prophecy, Akos heard a familiar voice.

“Eij!” Ori Rednalis, Eijeh’s best friend, came barreling down the hallway. She was gangly and clumsy-looking, all knees and elbows and stray hair. Akos had never seen her in a dress before, but she was in one now, made of heavy purple-red fabric and buttoned at the shoulder like a formal military uniform.

Ori’s knuckles were red with cold. She jumped to a stop in front of Eijeh. “There you are. I’ve had to listen to two of my aunt’s rants about the Assembly already and I’m about to explode.” Akos had heard one of Ori’s aunt’s rants before, about the Assembly— the governing body of the galaxy—valuing Thuvhe only for its iceflower production, and downplaying the Shotet attacks, calling them “civil disputes.” She had a point, but Akos always felt squirmy around ranting adults. He never knew what to say.

Ori continued, “Hello, Aoseh, Sifa, Cisi, Akos. Happy Blooming. Come on, let’s go, Eij.” She said all this in one go, hardly taking the time to breathe.

Eijeh looked to their dad, who flapped his hand. “Go on, then. We’ll see you later.”

“And if we catch you with a pipe in your mouth, as we did last year,” their mom said, “we will make you eat what’s inside it.”

Eijeh quirked his eyebrows. He never got embarrassed about anything, never flushed. Not even when the kids at school teased him for his voice—higher than most boys’—or for being rich, not something that made a person popular here in Hessa. He didn’t snap back, either. Just had a gift for shutting things out and letting them back in only when he wanted to.

He grabbed Akos by the elbow and pulled him after Ori. Cisi stayed behind, with their parents, like always. Eijeh and Akos chased Ori’s heels all the way into the Hall of Prophecy.

Ori gasped, and when Akos saw inside the hall, he almost echoed her. Somebody had strung hundreds of lanterns—each one dusted with hushflower to make it red—from the apex of the dome down to the outermost walls, in every direction, so a canopy of light hung over them. Even Eijeh’s teeth glowed red, when he grinned at Akos. In the middle of the room, which was usually empty, was a sheet of ice about as wide as a man was tall. Growing inside it were dozens of closed-up hushflowers on the verge of blooming.

More burnstone lanterns, about as big as Akos’s thumb, lined the sheet of ice where the hushflowers waited to bloom. These glowed white, probably so everyone could see the hushflowers’ true color, a richer red than any lantern. As rich as blood, some said.

There were a lot of people milling about, dressed in their finery: loose gowns that covered all but the hands and head, fastened with elaborate glass buttons in all different colors; knee-length waistcoats lined with supple elte skin, and twice-wrapped scarves. All in dark, rich colors, anything but gray or white, in contrast to their coats. Akos’s jacket was dark green, one of Eijeh’s old ones, still too big in the shoulders for him, and Eijeh’s was brown.

Ori led the way straight to the food. Her sour-faced aunt was there, offering plates to passersby, but she didn’t look at Ori. Akos got the feeling Ori didn’t like her aunt and uncle, which was why she pretty much lived at the Kereseth house, but he didn’t know what had happened to her parents.

Eijeh stuffed a roll in his mouth, practically choking on the crumbs.

“Careful,” Akos said to him. “Death by bread isn’t a dignified way to go.”

“At least I’ll die doing what I love,” Eijeh said, around all the bread.

Akos laughed.

Ori hooked her elbow around Eijeh’s neck, tugging his head in close. “Don’t look now. Stares coming in from the left.”

“So?” Eijeh said, spraying crumbs. But Akos already felt heat creeping into his neck. He chanced a look over at Eijeh’s left. A little group of adults stood there, quiet, eyes following them.

“You’d think you’d be a little more used to it, Akos,” Eijeh said to him. “Happens all the time, after all.”

“You’d think they would be used to us,” Akos said. “We’ve lived here all our lives, and we’ve had fates all our lives, what’s there to stare at?”

Everyone had a future, but not everyone had a fate—at least, that was what their mom liked to say. Only parts of certain “favored” families got fates, witnessed at the moment of their births by every oracle on every planet. In unison. When those visions came, their mom said, they could wake her from a sound sleep, they were so forceful.

Eijeh, Cisi, and Akos had fates. Only they didn’t know what they were, even though their mom was one of the people who had Seen them. She always said she didn’t need to tell them; the world would do it for her.

The fates were supposed to determine the movements of the worlds. If Akos thought about that too long, he got nauseous.

Ori shrugged. “My aunt says the Assembly’s been critical of the oracles on the news feed lately, so it’s probably just on everyone’s minds.”

“Critical?” Akos said. “Why?”

Eijeh ignored them both. “Come on, let’s find a good spot.”

Ori brightened. “Yeah, let’s. I don’t want to get stuck staring at other people’s butts like last year.”

“I think you’ve grown past butt height this year,” Eijeh said. “Now you’re at mid-back, maybe.”

“Oh good, because I definitely put on this dress for my aunt so I could stare at a bunch of backs.” Ori rolled her eyes.

This time Akos slipped into the crowd in the Hall of Prophecy first, ducking under glasses of wine and swooping gestures until he got to the front, right by the ice sheet and the closed-up hushflowers. They were right on time, too—their mom was up by the ice sheet, and she had taken off her shoes, though it was chilly in here. She said she was better at being an oracle when she was closer to the ground.

A few ticks ago he’d been laughing with Eijeh, but as the crowd went quiet, everything in Akos went quiet, too.

Eijeh leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear, “Do you feel that? The current’s humming like crazy in here. It’s like my chest is vibrating.”

Akos hadn’t noticed it, but Eijeh was right—he did feel like his chest was vibrating, like his blood was singing. Before he could answer, though, their mom started talking. Not loud, but she didn’t have to be, because they all knew the words by heart.

“The current flows through every planet in the galaxy, giving us its light as a reminder of its power.” As if on cue, they all looked up at the currentstream, its light showing in the sky through the red glass of the dome. At this time of year, it was almost always dark red, just like the hushflowers, like the glass itself. The currentstream was the visible sign of the current that flowed through all of them, and every living thing. It wound across the galaxy, binding all the planets together like beads on a single string.

“The current flows through everything that has life,” Sifa went on, “creating a space for it to thrive. The current flows through every person who breathes breath, and emerges differently through each mind’s sieve.The current flows through every flower that blooms in the ice.”

They scrunched together—not just Akos and Eijeh and Ori, but everyone in the whole room, standing shoulder to shoulder, so they could all see what was happening to the hushflowers in the ice sheet.

“The current flows through every flower that blooms in the ice,” Sifa repeated, “giving them the strength to bloom in the deepest dark. The current gives the most strength to the hushflower, our marker of time, our death-giving and peace-giving blossom.”

For a while there was silence, and it didn’t feel odd, like it should have. It was as if they were all hum-buzz-singing together, feeling the strange force that powered their universe, just like friction between particles powered the burnstones.

And then—movement. A shifting petal. A creaking stem. A shudder went through the small field of hushflowers growing among them. No one made a sound.

Akos glanced up at the red glass, the canopy of lanterns, just once, and he almost missed it—all the flowers bursting open. Red petals unfurling all at once, showing their bright centers, draping over their stems. The ice sheet teemed with color.

Everyone gasped, and applauded. Akos clapped with the rest of them, until his palms itched. Their dad came up to take their mom’s hands and plant a kiss on her. To everyone else she was untouchable: Sifa Kereseth, the oracle, the one whose currentgift gave her visions of the future. But their dad was always touching her, pressing the tip of his finger into her dimple when she smiled, tucking strays back into the knot she wore her hair in, leaving yellow flour fingerprints on her shoulders when he was done kneading the bread.

Their dad couldn’t see the future, but he could mend things with his fingers, like broken plates or the crack in the wall screen or the frayed hem of an old shirt. Sometimes he made you feel like he could put people back together, too, if they got themselves into trouble. So when he walked over to Akos, swung him into his arms, Akos didn’t even get embarrassed.

“Smallest Child!” his dad cried, tossing Akos over his shoulder. “Ooh—not so small, actually. Almost can’t do this anymore.”

“That’s not because I’m big, it’s because you’re old,”Akos replied.

“Such words! From my own son,” his dad said. “What punishment does a sharp tongue like that deserve, I wonder?”

“Don’t—”

But it was too late; his dad had already pitched him back and let him slide so he was holding both of Akos’s ankles. Hanging upside down, Akos pressed his shirt and jacket to his body, but he couldn’t help laughing. Aoseh lowered him down, only letting go when Akos was safe on the ground.

“Let that be a lesson to you about sass,” his dad said, leaning over him.

“Sass causes all the blood to rush to your head?” Akos said, blinking innocently up at him.

“Precisely.” Aoseh grinned. “Happy Blooming.”

Akos returned the grin. “You too.”

  That night they all stayed up so late Eijeh and Ori both fell asleep upright at the kitchen table. Their mom carried Ori to the living room couch, where she spent a good half of her nights these days, and their dad roused Eijeh. Everybody went one way or another after that, except Akos and his mom. They were always the last two up.

His mom switched the screen on, so the Assembly news feed played at a murmur. There were nine nation-planets in the Assembly, all the biggest or most important ones.Technically each nation-planet was independent, but the Assembly regulated trade, weapons, treaties, and travel, and enforced the laws in unregulated space. The Assembly feed went through one nation-planet after another: water shortage on Tepes, new medical innovation on Othyr, pirates boarded a ship in Pitha’s orbit.

His mom was popping open cans of dried herbs. At first Akos thought she was going to make a calming tonic, to help them both rest, but then she went into the hall closet to get the jar of hushflower, stored on the top shelf, out of the way.

“I thought we’d make tonight’s lesson a special one,” Sifa said. He thought of her that way—by her given name, and not as “Mom”—when she taught him about iceflowers. She’d taken to calling these late-night brewing sessions “lessons” as a joke two seasons ago, but now she sounded serious to Akos. Hard to say, with a mom like his.

“Get out a cutting board and cut some harva root for me,” she said, and she pulled on a pair of gloves. “We’ve used hushflower before, right?”

“In sleeping elixir,” Akos said, and he did as she said, standing on her left with cutting board and knife and dirt-dusted harva root. It was sickly white and covered in a fine layer of fuzz.

“And that recreational concoction,” she added. “I believe I told you it would be useful at parties someday. When you’re older.”

“You did,” Akos said. “You said ‘when you’re older’ then, too.”

Her mouth slanted into her cheek. Most of the time that was the best you could get out of his mom.

“The same ingredients an older version of you might use for recreation, you can also use for poison,” she said, looking grave. “As long as you double the hushflower and halve the harva root. Understand?”

“Why—” Akos started to ask her, but she was already changing the subject.

“So,” she said as she tipped a hushflower petal onto her own cutting board. It was still red, but shriveled, about the length of her thumb. “What is keeping your mind busy tonight?”

“Nothing,” Akos said. “People staring at us at the Blooming, maybe.”

“They are so fascinated by the fate-favored. I would love to tell you they will stop staring someday,” she said with a sigh, “but I’m afraid that you … you will always be stared at.”

He wanted to ask her about that pointed “you,” but he was careful around his mom during their lessons. Ask her the wrong question and she ended the lesson all of a sudden. Ask the right one, and he could find out things he wasn’t supposed to know.

“How about you?” he asked her. “What’s keeping your mind busy, I mean?”

“Ah.” His mom’s chopping was so smooth, the knife tap tap tapping on the board. His was getting better, though he still carved chunks where he didn’t mean to. “Tonight I am plagued by thoughts about the family Noavek.”

Her feet were bare, toes curled under from the cold. The feet of an oracle.

“They are the ruling family of Shotet,” she said. “The land of our enemies.”

The Shotet were a people, not a nation-planet, and they were known to be fierce, brutal. They stained lines into their arms for every life they had taken, and trained even their children in the art of war. And they lived on Thuvhe, the same planet as Akos and his family—though the Shotet didn’t call this planet “Thuvhe,” or themselves “Thuvhesits”—across a huge stretch of feathergrass. The same feathergrass that scratched at the windows of Akos’s family’s house.

His grandmother—his dad’s mom—had died in one of the Shotet invasions, armed only with a bread knife, or so his dad’s stories said. And the city of Hessa still wore the scars of Shotet violence, the names of the lost carved into low stone walls, broken windows patched up instead of replaced, so you could still see the cracks.

Just across the feathergrass. Sometimes they felt close enough to touch.

“The Noavek family is fate-favored, did you know that? Just like you and your siblings are,” Sifa went on. “The oracles didn’t always see fates in that family line, it happened only within my lifetime. And when it did, it gave the Noaveks leverage over the Shotet government, to seize control, which has been in their hands ever since.”

“I didn’t know that could happen. A new family suddenly getting fates, I mean.”

“Well, those of us who are gifted in seeing the future don’t control who gets a fate,” his mom said. “We see hundreds of futures, of possibilities. But a fate is something that happens to a particular person in every single version of the future we see, which is very rare. And those fates determine who the fate-favored families are—not the other way around.”

He’d never thought about it that way. People always talked about the oracles doling out fates like presents to special, important people, but to hear his mom tell it, that was all backward. Fates made certain families important.

“So you’ve seen their fates. The fates of the Noaveks.”

She nodded. “Just the son and the daughter. Ryzek and Cyra. He’s older; she’s your age.”

He’d heard their names before, along with some ridiculous rumors. Stories about them frothing at the mouth, or keeping enemies’ eyeballs in jars, or lines of kill marks from wrist to shoulder. Maybe that one didn’t sound so ridiculous.

“Sometimes it is easy to see why people become what they are,” his mom said softly. “Ryzek and Cyra, children of a tyrant. Their father, Lazmet, child of a woman who murdered her own brothers and sisters. The violence infects each generation.” She bobbed her head, and her body went with it, rocking back and forth. “And I see it. I see all of it.”

Akos grabbed her hand and held on.

“I’m sorry, Akos,” she said, and he wasn’t sure if she was saying sorry for saying too much, or for something else, but it didn’t really matter.

They both stood there for a while, listening to the mutter of the news feed, the darkest night somehow even darker than before.

  Original post: http://ift.tt/2mEMR1S

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2mkd5El

[krystisyaandwine]

This books was so, SO difficult for me to review. I feel like because this book was written by Veronica Roth, whose writing I have so admired, I’m more critical than I am of other writer’s books, which isn’t exactly fair.

That said, I LIKED this book. I did not LOVE this book. I really, REALLY wanted to love it, but it just fell a little short for me in a few areas.

That said, I truly think Veronica Roth is an amazing author and person, and she has layered some incredibly important themes in this book.

Wine Pairing

Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

What better wine to pair with Veronica Roth’s HIGHLY anticipated new novel than this Starry Night Zinfandel. Fantasy meets science fiction in this novel, very much like the Van Gogh painting that inspired this gorgeous bottle of wine.

*All wine recommendations are for strictly for those of legal drinking age only.*

The Nitty Gritty:

Title: Carve the Mark

Author: Veronica Roth

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Pub Date: January 17, 2017

Pages: 468

GoodReads Description:

On a planet where violence and vengeance rule, in a galaxy where some are favored by fate, everyone develops a currentgift, a unique power meant to shape the future. While most benefit from their currentgifts, Akos and Cyra do not—their gifts make them vulnerable to others’ control. Can they reclaim their gifts, their fates, and their lives, and reset the balance of power in this world?

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 from the peace-loving nation of Thuvhe, and his loyalty to his family is limitless. Though protected by his unusual currentgift, once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers, Akos is desperate to get his brother out alive—no matter what the cost. When Akos is thrust into Cyra’s world, the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable. They must decide to help each other to survive—or to destroy one another.

Fans of Star Wars and Divergent will revel in internationally bestselling author Veronica Roth’s stunning new science-fiction fantasy series.

My Review

So, as usual, I want to start with my positive thoughts on this book. And there truly were a lot of positives here. I just didn’t LOVE it as much as I did the Divergent series.

One incredibly important theme in this novel was the potential horrors of colonialism and war, and how those things affect the people and culture of any nation that is under the threat of being conquered. The people of Shotet are *spoiler* an excellent example of both sides of this, since they have both been attacked by other nations and have become a warrior nation themselves in result. They’ve turned into a nation which the people of Thuve, as well as the inhabitants of other planets in their solar system, must fear.

I also found Cyra and Ryzek to be FASCINATING characters. The pain that Cyra is constantly in demonstrates how incredibly strong she is. But what makes her truly interesting is that her “gift” is driven by something deep within her. Is it that she wants to keep people at arms distance? Is it that she feels like she deserves the pain because of the pain her family has inflicted on others in the past? I’m not quite certain yet, but I do think it’s fascinating to think about, and I can’t wait to uncover even more about her character in the next book.

Like I said, I also found Ryzek to be captivating. His character was so clearly developed by his father’s abuse and his less than optimistic fate. I love that while he’s so entirely HORRIBLE, you can still see how much he despises being what he is and how hard it really is for him.

The biggest thing I struggled with in this book was that oftentimes it just felt a little too easy. I felt like Cyra and Akos overcame their animosity towards one another too easily. There just wasn’t enough tension there to really pull me into their romance.

I also thought several of the BIG action scenes felt a little rushed. I would have liked to have seen them drawn out a bit more. I want those types of scenes to have me on the edge of my seat, to make me feel anxious, and like I don’t know what is going to happen next. Unfortunately, in this story I felt like those scenes were a bit rushed and too easy for the characters to get through.

This isn’t a criticism exactly, more of an observation, but there were a lot of themes in Carve the Mark that were also explored in the Divergent series. For example: the abusive father, the mother that abandons her child for selfish reasons disguised as concern for the greater good, groups of people divided by their values, and older brothers that are just the WORST.

I did find the values that the various nations founded their cultures on were a bit strange. In Divergent we had intelligence, bravery, kindness, selflessness, and honesty. In Carve the Mark we have hushflowers, the current, mystery, and comfort. From what Veronica said at her signing last night, I think we’ll find out more about this topic in the next book, but at this point, those values seem a little odd.

Like I said at the beginning of this review I liked this book, but I just didn’t feel like it was as great as Veronica’s other books. I can’t help but compare this to Veronica’s other books, which I don’t feel is exactly fair to this book, but when you love an author’s work so much, it’s impossible to go into their next book without having certain expectations.

I am intrigued by this world, and I would really like to see Veronica develop it a lot more in the next book. Also, I want more Ryzek. I found him to be the most interesting character in the book hands down!

  Cover Rating

The cover of this book is STUNNING. It’s simple, yet gorgeous. I love the contrast in colors and the sheen to the paper. Also, we noticed last night at the signing that the colors were slightly different in each of our books. The color varying from a brighter blue to a deeper purple, which is just REALLY cool.

Swoon Worthiness

Unfortunately, I did not love Akos in this book. I’m hoping to see more complexity in his character in the next book, but I just felt a little…MEH toward him in this book. Maybe it’s because he’s just too good, which probably says more about me than his character honestly. But I really, REALLY would have liked to have seen more tension between him and Cyra. As it was, their romance just didn’t grip me like Tris and Four’s did. Sorry! I cannot help but compare these books. I just can’t!

 About the AuthorAbout the Author

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Four: A Divergent Collection. Ms. Roth and her husband live in Chicago.

You can visit her online at:

www. veronicarothbooks.com

Other Books By This Author

  Me and Veronica Roth!

Have you guys read Carve the Mark yet? What did you think of it? Are you going to read the next book in the series? Tell me your thoughts!

Fantasy and Science Fiction Collide in Carve the Mark This books was so, SO difficult for me to review. I feel like because this book was written by Veronica Roth, whose writing I have so admired, I'm more critical than I am of other writer's books, which isn't exactly fair.

[carvethemarkquotes]

I didn’t pack very much. Some clothes, some weapons. I threw out the perishable food, and stripped my bed of its sheets and blankets. Akos helped in silence, his arm still wrapped in a bandage. His bag of possessions was already on the table. I had watched him pack some clothes and some of the books I had given him, his favorite pages folded over. Though I had already read all those books, I wanted to open them again just to search out the parts he most treasured; I wanted to read them as if immersed in his mind. “You’re acting weird,” he said once we were finished, and all there was left to do was wait. “I don’t like going home,” I said. It was true, at least. Akos looked around, and shrugged. “Seems like this is your home. There’s more of you in here than anywhere in Voa.” He was right, of course. I was happy that he knew what “more of me” really was--that he might know as much about me, from observation, as I knew about him. And I did know him. I could pick him out in a crowd from his gait alone. I knew the shade of the veins that showed on the backs of his hands. And his favorite knife for chopping iceflowers. And the way his breath always smelled spiced, like hushflower and sendes leaf mixed together. “Maybe next time I’ll do more to my room,” he said. You won’t be back next time, I thought. “Yeah.” I forced a smile. “You should.”

Carve the Mark, written by Veronica Roth

[jlennidorner]

Express Yourself #amreading First Sentence @VeronicaRoth @CrystalCollier1

Jan 16 – 20 What’s the first sentence of the book you’re currently reading?

“Hushflowers always bloomed when the night was longest.” Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth @VeronicaRoth “Alexia was reasonably confident that exiting the carriage was the equivalent of stepping into Hell.” Moonless by Crystal Collier @CrystalCollier1 My hardcover copy of Carve the Markcame last night in the mail. That…

[snarktheater]

Carve the Mark — Part 1 (Chapters 1-2)

At long last, it's time to get started on Veronica Roth's latest train wreck. Or hey, maybe it'll be good, what do I know.

…Yeah, I can't really feel optimistic about it. I know of the accusations of racism, and Roth's "but I'm not racist!" argument, which fell completely flat. Plus, you know, it's Veronica Roth. It'll be an uphill battle. Yet surprisingly, I find that I don't really know that much about the plot or even the characters of this one going in. This is kind of remarkable, considering how much noise the book made. I even stayed away from details of the racism debate on purpose, just to see if I could find it by myself.

Anyway. The book is divided in four parts, and the first is just two chapters, so we're tackling that in one go. Also, before we even start, I can already tell that I'm gonna be annoyed by one thing: the protagonists. Specifically the fact that we're apparently doing the same thing as in Allegiant, with the chapters being each named after whose PoV we're following this time. It's a strategy that annoys me even in books that I like, and…well, you are no George R. R. Martin. Don't try to be.

Although I have to say, I'm actually surprised to find third person narration. Did not expect that. (Not that third person is inherently superior, it's just my personal preference and, let's be real, Roth didn't really handle shifting first person all that well anyway).

On the plus side, the chapter naming scheme means I'm not left with no name for the protagonist for a while like I was in Divergent, I guess. Then again, this wouldn't be an issue in third person at all, I suppose. Eh, whatever, let's just read this fucker.

Said protagonist is Akos Kereseth, fourteen years old, although they use fourteen "seasons" instead, which at first made me wonder if I had to do math to know how old he is in years. I don't know if it's poor wording on the book's end (say, maybe it was going for something like "fourteen springs" and failed) or if their world really has year-long seasons. ne thing at a time.

Akos lives on a world named Thuvhe, a nation-planet that's part of an Assembly of multiple similar nations who are officially independent, but effectively subjected to the Assembly's rule at least on some levels. Think the European Union, but with planets instead of countries. Except Thuvhe isn't quite a "nation-planet", because…there's a group of people who aren't part of that nation. But I'll get back to them in a moment.

Akos is also the youngest of three children, and has a sister Cisi and a brother Eijeh (the latter being sixteen, the former…I have no clue, but older). Their parents are Aoseh, son of a military family who has turned his back on that life, and Sifa, one of three oracles of their world.

Every planet in the galaxy had three oracles: one rising; one sitting, like their mother; and one falling. Akos didn’t quite understand what it meant, except that the current whispered the future in his mom’s ears, and half the people they came across were in awe of her.

Which brings us to the current, a mystical force of some kind. It connects every living things and gives everyone a unique ability called a currentgift, which reveals itself after puberty. Sometimes they're hereditary, sometimes not, which I'd assume is an excuse so that Roth can basically paint secondary character families in broad strokes while giving main characters unique abilities. Which is…not the worst thing ever, but I don't see the point of mentioning at all that it can be hereditary.

I think Sifa being an oracle is her currentgift, Aoseh can break and mend things, Cisi can calm people down by talking to them. Got all that?

[…] which meant, judging by how small Akos still was at fourteen seasons old, he wouldn’t be getting his for awhile yet. Because he can't just…be short? At fourteen, he should probably be past puberty. Unless the gift comes even later than that, in which case you should try to specify.

Yeah, this opening is chock-full of infodumps, and I'm getting as much of them out before we get started, even if they weren't in the books. Because this is better than having to be repeatedly confused, only to get my answer three pages later.

As oracle, Sifa can see many possible futures, not just one. But there are people whose future is the same in every iteration, who are called "fate-favored". It…mostly feels like just a reason to make the characters special without trying. Because yes, Akos and his entire family are fate-favored, as is the family of the book's other protagonist. Again, more on that in a moment.

Why do I call this special snowflake points? Well…

Eijeh, Cisi, and Akos had fates. Only they didn’t know what they were, even though their mom was one of the people who had Seen them. She always said she didn’t need to tell them; the world would do it for her.

Yeah. Basically, they have a fate, but they can't know about them, which…kind of renders the existence of a prophecy irrelevant. You might as well call them a vague "special" term, like…Divergent, really. Speaking of which, this means I assume their fate-favored status will be developed eventually, but it won't make up for the fact that mom should really tell her kids. Not telling them means they're left unprepared to face what's coming. That's not nice, mom.

Our opening chapter takes us through the "Blooming ritual", which is basically a winter solstice celebration with a flavor of watching a specific species of flower bloom. They're called hushflowers, they're blood red, they're probably symbolically important, but at the moment, they don't do much.

What it does is give the book the opportunity to throw tons of world building at us. And I have to say, coming from the author of the Divergent series, a.k.a. "I did not really think this dystopian system through, did I?"…I'm shocked by how developed this world is, and how efficiently the book paints a picture of it. Thuvhe is a snow world, it has cultural symbolism woven around furnaces that burn stones producing different lights to mirror the current's manifestation in their sky, and the buildings are circular to make these furnaces their literal center. Fashion is, unsurprisingly, subject of a lot of focus, but I'll let it slide because it works with the setting.

It's simple, but elegant world building, and I'll give credit where credit is due.

That said, while I'm talking about the book's style so far, I'll take a moment to say that what it does right in world building, it makes up for by failing at character building. It's all tell, no show. Take Ori, Eijeh's best friend. She's a tomboy archetype, and you know she is because…

She was gangly and clumsy-looking, all knees and elbows and stray hair. Akos had never seen her in a dress before, but she was in one now, made of heavy purple-red fabric and buttoned at the shoulder like a formal military uniform.

Or Eijeh himself, for that matter.

Eijeh quirked his eyebrows. He never got embarrassed about anything, never flushed. Not even when the kids at school teased him for his voice—higher than most boys’—or for being rich, not something that made a person popular here in Hessa. He didn’t snap back, either. Just had a gift for shutting things out and letting them back in only when he wanted to.

I wonder if that's a gift or a currentgift. (But as a side note: it me)

Anyway. The ceremony takes place in a temple, although the Thuvhesits seem to be more "spiritual about the current" than full-on religious. Sifa, as the sitting oracle, is the officiant, and her family, being fate-favored (which is public knowledge because it tends to run in families, although it doesn't always), are semi-outcasts, being viewed with respect but also from a distance by most people.

But Akos wasn’t “nice”; that was just what people said about quiet people.

Yeah, that sort of thing. (Side-note: it me too. I said almost these words verbatim recently)

After the ceremony, the Kereseths return home, and Sifa teaches Akos about the medicinal properties of the iceflowers native to Thuvhe, and also does a lot of ominous foreshadowing, as oracles tend to do in stories. She still remains painfully vague, of course.

“I’m sorry, Akos,” she said, and he wasn’t sure if she was saying sorry for saying too much, or for something else, but it didn’t really matter.

Chapter two takes us to school, because…of course there's a school, complete with a jock named Osno who just discovered his currentgift was self-healing, a girl named Riha who's a stereotypical Mean Girl who only believes what she sees and has romantic tension with Osno, and…I'm just wondering if I should care at all, because I know that we're not staying at school for long. But I'm mentioning them just in case.

What does matter is that ~something~ happens. Power goes out, Akos sees Ori taken out of school by her aunt Badha, who reveals that Ori is also fate-favored, which Akos didn't know.

“All the fate-favored are in danger, understand? You are exposed. You must go.” “What about the Kereseths? Aren’t they in danger, too?” “Not as much as you.”

As for Akos, he and his siblings are summoned by the headmaster to wait in his office until their dad picks them up. He cut the power off on purpose, because the Assembly made an emergency broadcast, and he didn't want the other students to know about the news until the fate-favored kids were out.

Aoseh is the one who explains what happened when he shows up, because the headmaster won't do it: the oracles (I'm not sure if he means all oracles or just the ones form Thuvhe) told the Assembly about every fate they've seen (as in, the ones that fate-favored peoples have), and the Assembly made them all public because…reasons. I mean, I assume there's a reason, but no one asks about it, so I guess we'll have to wait.

Eijeh is the one to ask the other important question in this circumstance: what their fates are. But no, Aoseh still won't tell his children. He does tell them that Sifa has gone missing, but she's probably fine, because as an oracle, she'll have known about this. Except…if she did, why didn't she warn her family? She's just a waste of prophetic powers.

They take a floater (which is…basically an airship of some kind, I'm not sure what exactly because they're not described in a lot of detail) back home, and…random infodump occurs. See, their home is on the outskirts of the city of Hessa, and there's "feathergrass" outside their home, which causes hallucinations in people who come nearby.

They heard whispers, or they saw dark shapes among the stems; they waded through the snow, away from the path, and were swallowed by the earth. Every so often they heard stories about it, or someone spotted a full skeleton from their floater.

Point is, Akos is used to resisting them, but he notices that there are no visions right now. Is this relevant? I don't know, but I imagine the book brought it up for some reason.

It definitely doesn't influence the rest of the chapter, where three soldiers are waiting home. And…this is where things get thorny.

I mentioned that not all people on Thuvhe where Thuvhesits or part of the nation-planet. Well, these are those people: the Shotet. And the way they're described…

The Shotet were a people, not a nation-planet, and they were known to be fierce, brutal.

Yeah, they're nomadic people, without a nation of their own, and they're viewed as "barbarian" invaders, and overall inferior (Aoseh uses the cliché "not worth the dirt on my fingers" or something to that effect) by the Thuvhesits. And…there are immediately a few parallels there, but in their first mention in chapter 1, they felt a little…Jewish and/or Rroma-inspired. Hell, Shotet even sounds like a Semitic triliteral root.

It's probably a little early to call racism, but it's not the best start to introducing these people, especially doing so through the bias of characters who definitely are racist towards them.

Anyway, what you need to know about the Shotet is that they're currently ruled by the Noavek, a family whose latest generation (a son Ryzek and daughter Cyra) are fate-favored, which…somehow helped their dad become the ruler of the Shotet. Also, he's a pretty awful guy…according to Sifa.

“Their father, Lazmet, child of a woman who murdered her own brothers and sisters. The violence infects each generation.”

Cyra, by the way, is the book's other protagonist. I know because her name is the title of half of the book's chapters, so I don't think it counts as a spoiler.

Anyway, I'm done with the infodump. Right now, we have three soldiers, one of them being Vas Kuzar, who's infamous for something, since Aoseh knows him by reputation. And during the ensuing confrontation, Akos realizes that he understands and speaks the Shotet language.

[Akos] heard the words coming out of his mouth, with their sure meaning, and he also heard harsh syllables, with sudden stops and closed vowels. He heard Shotet, a language he had never learned. So unlike graceful Thuvhesit, which was like wind catching snowflakes in its updraft. He was speaking Shotet. He sounded just like the soldiers. But how—how could he speak a language he had never learned?

I mean…you live in a world where everyone has a power, and you haven't found yours yet, it's pretty obvious—

Well, nope. Vas assumes this means Akos is part Shotet, either through Sifa having an affair or Sifa being part-Shotet herself (because Aoseh can't possibly be part-Shotet?). Because…knowing a language is genetic? I don't understand.

Speaking of gifts, you'd think that Aoseh's ability to break stuff or Cisi's ability to calm people could be useful here, but…nope. They do jack shit. Which I can't even chalk up to being paralyzed by fear, since they're all acting pretty defiant, just…not using their powers in the process.

The soldiers are here for Sifa's youngest and second-born children, i.e. Akos and Eijeh. They can easily guess Akos is the youngest because she's super short, but they try to make Aoseh tell them who out of Eijeh and Cisi they need too. And I'm left wondering…why can't they just take all three?

Well, it doesn't matter. Aoseh struggles and even stabs Vas, but he's immune to pain…as well as bleeding, I guess?

Blood poured from the wound, soaking Vas’s dark trousers. “You know my name, but you don’t know my gift?”

Like…I'm pretty sure blood loss kills you even if you don't feel it happening, and blood is described as "pouring", so that's probably an issue. Just saying.

Aoseh tells Eijeh to run away, which gives away that he's the second-born, so Vas just kills him, and takes the boy with him. I'm…actually not sure if he does anything to Cisi at all. It kind of sounds like he leaves her there to cry over her dad's corpse. Because feminism means the one girl in the scene is so irrelevant that she's not even worth killing to make sure she doesn't come after you in revenge. Or something.

And that's the end of part one. Plot-wise, the book is…kind of bland so far. But honestly, so far, I'm just worried about what it'll do with the Shotet. Even if I didn't know about the racism controversy, I think I'd still be worried after just one chapter. But I guess we'll see how it progresses.

[snarktheater]

Carve the Mark — Part 3 (Chapters 15-16)

As we open the third part of this book, we finally get both of our points of view alternating from chapter to chapter. Which, yes, also means we constantly swap from third to first person. But hey, a least this means the plot might actually move forward? Maybe?

One can dream.

That doesn't mean we escape bad writing though. Remember how Akos tried to escape a few chapters ago, and we were told about it after the fact? Yeah, I guess now is the right time to get a flashback to that, because it's totally still relevant.

AKOS RAN THROUGH THE memory of his almost-escape with Eijeh over and over again

That is a flimsy excuse, even in this book.

We do learn that Akos's power also works on current-powered technology, which includes locks and handcuffs.

That was how he had gotten free to kill Kalmev Radix in the feathergrass.

Any other scene you want to explain away a fourth of the book later, or can we move forward now?

Back to the present, then. It's been a week since the sojourn ship took off, and not much has happened yet. Since we have no idea how fast the ship is traveling, or how far it has to go, I don't really know what to do with that information, but there you have it.

Akos goes to the ship's public training room (because there's only one? Even though literally all the "able-bodied" Shotet are on this ship? How many Shotet are there in total, exactly?), and there, he meets Jorek Kuzar. What's that? You don't know who that is because the book introduced him for seemingly no reason and dropped him for five chapters, so I didn't even tell you about him? I'd apologize, but frankly, I'm too busy wondering why we even had that earlier introduction.

So, when Vas told Cyra about Uzul Zetsyvis's passing, he was accompanied by Jorek, who is his second cousin. He refused to become a soldier/translator like his dad, and that makes him suspect in Ryzek's eyes. Akos also notes that he has no kill marks, which means…I don't know, that he's a good person? At least that's my assumption, since after some padding, he offers Akos to help him escape. Akos refuses, saying he has unfinished business.

“Then what about that brother of yours?” Jorek said. “The one who inhales when Ryzek exhales?”

…What do you think "unfinished business" means, Jorek?

Well, Jorek adds Eijeh in his offer, so Akos agrees to help him to earn both his and his brother's freedom. His brother who, shall I remind you, is currently under severe mind-fuck and would probably do his best to sabotage your escape.

The deal is to kill Jorek's dad, Suzao Kuzar. Who, it turns out, was one of the men with Vas who kidnapped Akos and Eijeh. So it's basically two birds with one stone for Akos.

“I’m not a fool, no matter what you people think of the Thuvhesit,” Akos snapped, his cheeks going ruddy as he picked up the practice blade. “You think I’m going to just let you set me up for a fall?” “I’m as much at risk as you are,” Jorek replied. “For all I know you could go whisper in Cyra Noavek’s ear about what I just asked you, and it could get back to Ryzek, or my father. But I’m choosing to trust in your hatred. As you should trust in mine.”

One: Ms Roth, blushing is not a character trait. She keeps referring to Akos's blushing, and I think it's supposed to build the idea that he's a soft, sensitive boy, but she forgets to…actually make him sensitive? Blushing is basically a side-effect.

Two: guess what Akos does right after this? Tell Cyra about this. Well, okay, he doesn't tell her about Jorek's involvement, but he does ask her how he could kill Suzao. Information which she…happily provides?

“It would have to be in the arena to be legal, as you know,” she said. “And you would want it to be legal, or you would end up dead. Arena challenges are banned from when the ship leaves the atmosphere until after the scavenge, which means you have to wait until after. […] But you don’t have the status to challenge Suzao even then, so you have to provoke him to challenge you, instead.”

So that's our plan for Akos's subplot for this part of the book, I assume. And/or until the end? Is this book a stand-alone, or is it planned to be a series? I should have checked.

Also, more shippy angst, as Akos muses on how he can't help but alleviate Cyra's pain, even though she's his enemy and he should do everything to fight his fate of serving her family. As for Cyra, she warns him he really wants to do this, because he could become "like her". Because she still sees herself as a monster, for…some reason. You know, the more we learn about Cyra and her powers, the more it feels like layers of victim blaming are added onto one another.

And then we get some banter as they go cook, because we also need shippy fluff, I guess.

So before I continue, I have to take a moment to discuss about how Jorek is made "special" by showing he has no kill marks. In absolute, this sounds like a fine concept—the people who don't kill other people or only do so in defense or while coerced are probably the ones you want to mark as good people. But…then, that creates a really uncomfortable view of the Shotet culture, where there was room for something interesting.

After all, while the Noaveks have seemingly turned kill marks into a subject of pride over the kills one has done, the tradition predates them, and it already included something for the kills—even if it was viewed as a form of loss and presumably atonement. Since the Shotet have such a system in place (along with the arena challenges), we can infer that killing people is something they had to do, for various reasons (think Akos's mark, which was in self-defense and in an attempt to escape). And yet, the book is basically telling us that no, kill marks are wrong all the time.

That speaks of a philosophy that redemption is impossible (unless you're a main character?), which…I frankly don't want to get into. But it also seems to vilify Shotet culture as a whole even further than it already is for even having this system in place. After all, a "good" culture wouldn't have the need for kill marks at all.

Time will tell if this pattern remains throughout the book, of course. And it is pretty hard to have an impression when the book doesn't even bother to describe most people's kill marks even as it claims that Akos has learned the Shotet automatism to check for them. But as it stands, that's the impression I'm getting from this.

And with that, back to the story, with Cyra coming back from a random meeting with Ryzek, who has in fact decided to go to Pitha to scavenge for weapons, in spite of what the current dictates. Because you know he's evil if he subverts his people's spirituality for his own gain. Not, you know, the murder, oppression, anti-intellectualism.

Along the way, all the lights go out, and a message is broadcast on the ship's speakers, once again spreading Ryzek's fate for all to hear.

“The truth can be suppressed, but it can never be erased.”

Also, Cyra gets attacked, but she's just the best fighter ever, so even being in the dark and taken by surprise isn't enough. However, she feels guilt over Lety Zetsyvis's death, so she lets her attacker (also a girl) go, though she does keep the dagger she was attacked with.

Hopefully it had been too dark for the security footage to show that I had just let a renegade go free.

Cyra Noavek: unable to make up her mind about where her loyalties lie, I guess.

She does go to Ryzek with the knife to show to him that she was also attacked and prove she's not behind the attack (which she apparently thinks he would consider?). He has indeed been attacked too, but Vas took care of the assassins, although Ryzek is clearly shaken by it, even drinking hushflower tea to calm himself. Which is a big deal since hushflower is so typically Thuvhesit.

It wasn’t his fault that he had turned out this way, so terrified and so creative with his cruelty. Our father had conditioned him to become this person. The greatest gift Lazmet Noavek had ever given me, even greater than life itself, had been leaving me alone.

Yeah, um…one: parental neglect isn't exactly a gift. Two: children who witness abuse but aren't the victim of it still internalize that abuse. Three: Ryzek being an abuser himself isn't excused by being a victim himself.

And then…more victim blaming as Cyra tries to connect to Ryzek.

“We weren’t always like this, you and I,” I said. […] “Then you killed our mother,” he said quietly. “And now, this is all that we can be.”

Yes, you sort-of accidentally killed your mom, therefore I must abuse you. Um…logic?

And that's…pretty much the end of that scene. Cut to morning (whatever that means when you're in space, which the book seems to have completely forgotten), where Ryzek has instated a curfew and will randomly torture people until he finds the renegades. Cyra and Akos talk about it while a news feed goes on in the background, and Cyra comments on the subtitles that are given.

There was a water shortage on Tepes, in the western continent. The Shotet subtitles were accurate. For once. […] The Assembly was debating further requirements for the oracles on each planet, to be voted on in forty days. Shotet subtitles: “Assembly attempts to assert tyrannical control over oracles through another predatory measure, to be enacted at the end of the forty day cycle.” Accurate, but biased. Some notorious band of space pirates had just been sentenced to fifteen seasons in prison. Shotet subtitles: “Band of Zoldan traditionalists sentenced to fifteen seasons in prison for speaking out against unnecessarily restrictive Assembly regulations.” Not so accurate.

I won't make the obvious fake news joke (mostly because…let's be real, it's not funny anymore, it's just sad), and point out instead that if all Shotet people are exposed to Othyrian, with subtitles, I cannot for a minute believe that no one would pick up at least on some of the language. Since the subtitles aren't completely inaccurate, and it's not even consistently done, it should be possible. I mean, that is literally how I started learning English.

Things only a person who isn't bilingual would write: this shit.

They argue about he meaning of he sojourn, and how Cyra is clinging to traditions instead of seeing the Shotet for what they have become, leading to this:

Not for the first time, I wondered how he would feel if I died. […] I might be the Noavek he would one day die for, given how much time we spent together.

If it's not the first time, why is this the first time I hear about it? Also, thanks of you to let us know that you came to the obvious conclusion that serving the Noavek family didn't necessarily mean serving Ryzek, because so far, I've also had no indication that any character was aware of that.

Anyway, this is enough of that, let's have some more shippy times!

He was angled toward me. There were only a few inches separating us. We were often close together, when sparring, when training, when making our breakfasts, and he had to touch me to keep my pain at bay. So it should not have felt strange that his hip was so close to my stomach, that I could see ropy muscle standing out from his arm. But it did.

Protagonists are allowed to be aware of their own feelings. Even female protagonists. Do you realize that, Veronica Roth?

Akos also tells her that he's moved on with his plan to provoke Suzao into challenging him by having his son slip potions into his morning medicine. Apparently Akos is planning to let Suzao know it was him, and that's how he'll get his challenge. Question is: is this legal? I mean, that's the whole conceit of trying to get him to the arena, and I sincerely doubt that drugging someone would fly.

Cut to Cyra attending a meeting of Ryzek's closest associates, which leads to this interesting revelation from Vas:

“You know so little about my gift, for all the time we’ve known each other,” Vas said. “Do you know I have to set alarms to eat and drink? And check myself constantly for broken bones and bruises?”

So…the book is aware of the real-life condition, but it still gave Vas that gift, and it still acted like immunity to pain was a good and useful thing, because…?

Oh, also, this leads to a "we're not so different" moment from Cyra, because she's also always aware of her body. She asks when his gift first appeared, and he tells her he was being attacked by bullies as a child, which is also just like her. Is this going anywhere? More importantly: is this going towards a love triangle? Because I've been pretty good at avoiding those lately, I don't want to break my lucky streak.

Yma Zetsyvis is also at that meeting. Not because she doesn't care about her husband and daughter's deaths, mind you. No, she just…blames it all on Cyra, as if Ryzek hadn't commanded her to do it both times. But hey, how else will we establish that women only have the choice between protagonist, dead, irrelevant, or evil?

I turned to her. “What kind of sacrifices have you made?” […] “I have denied myself the pleasure of watching you bleed to death,” she whispered.

The rest of them also make fun of Cyra for good measure, and at this point I don't feel like giving more detail, so…let's just move on.

We were on the edge of the galaxy, so the only planets—or pieces of planets—left to see were not populous enough to participate in the Assembly. We called them “peripheral planets,” or just “the brim,” more casually. My mother had urged the Shotet to regard them as our brothers and sisters in the same struggle for legitimacy. My father had privately scoffed at that idea, saying that Shotet was greater than any brim spawn.

So Lazmet and Ryzek are refusing natural allies. In fact, they're refusing them so hard they forbade all travel to these planets. Well, it's realistic, if stupid. Also, do we really need to keep harping on what a saint Ylira was? She still stood by and let everything happen.

Speaking of Ryzek, he hasn't done any progress finding the renegades, so he's decided to pick a scapegoat to reassure people. Cyra feels bad at that thought, which confuses her for some reason, because she's such a total monster even a compassionate thought is alien to her. Even though she's never acted or thought any differently until now.

So she decides to go to her old tutor Otega, who now works the kitchen, because why wouldn't you waste a tutor's valuable skills by making her do menial work? Oh but wait, it gets stupider, because her currentgift also lets her find the owner of any item she touches, which Ryzek must know since Lazmet used to his advantage. So it's even more stupid not to keep her close!

But it does mean Cyra can freely ask her to use the dagger she got from her assassin to find her again, and hopefully get to the renegades through her. Why? No idea.

And with that, each of our protagonist has his own plot to worry about, so I guess this is as good a place to stop as any. Plus, this post is already horrendously long. Find out how Akos's "drug someone until they want to fight you" and Cyra's "find renegades to maybe help them maybe help her brother who knows she has not character consistency" plots will unfold next time!