"The author takes special care to mention "blue eyes" as if this is elevated. As a brown-eyed white person, the repeated mooning over blue eyes made me uncomfortable. Considering that all the characters are white, I can only imagine how a POC might feel reading this."
All of the magical races in The Cat's Eye Chronicles have hair/eye colors that match their elemental inheritance, ie. Wind/Ice, Wind/Fire, Darkness/Fire, Wind/Light, etc. Dorian, Volcrian (notice the naming conventions?) have blue eyes due to their being of the Wulven bloodmages, who were born of Wind/Ice, who all have silver hair and blue eyes. Crash's race has black hair and green eyes, indicating their serpentine/demonic nature. Humans have brown, blue etc. Wulven mercenaries have brown/hazel. Harpies have violet/purple eyes. This isn't to disregard people of color, or to elevate eye color, but to indicate elemental heritage among magical beings.
On a broader note, I grew up in Los Angeles where the majority of my peers were bilingual and BIPOC. My family is half Black. I am not a stranger to critical race theory. Sora begins her adventure in the Northern hemisphere, geographically more in alignment with European countries, and in later books travels to the Southlands which are predominantly brown/tan, etc. Frictions between magical races is a source of conflict in CEC and I'm always open to conversations about it. However, trying to insinuate that I am in some way "elevating blue eyes" in a racist way, the subtext being that I am a white supremacist of some kind, is absolutely out-of-pocket and I will not tolerate it. I love my Black family and I love the diversity of BIPOC cultures in the U.S.
All of the magical races in The Cat's Eye Chronicles have hair/eye colors that match their elemental inheritance, ie. Wind/Ice, Wind/Fire, Darkness/Fire, Wind/Light, etc. Dorian, Volcrian (notice the naming conventions?) have blue eyes due to their being of the Wulven bloodmages, who were born of Wind/Ice, who all have silver hair and blue eyes. Crash's race has black hair and green eyes, indicating their serpentine/demonic nature. Humans have brown, blue etc. Wulven mercenaries have brown/hazel. Harpies have violet/purple eyes. This isn't to disregard people of color, or to elevate eye color, but to indicate elemental heritage among magical beings.
On a broader note, I grew up in Los Angeles where the majority of my peers were bilingual and BIPOC. My family is half Black. I am not a stranger to critical race theory. Sora begins her adventure in the Northern hemisphere, geographically more in alignment with European countries, and in later books travels to the Southlands which are predominantly brown/tan, etc. Frictions between magical races is a source of conflict in CEC and I'm always open to conversations about it. However, trying to insinuate that I am in some way "elevating blue eyes" in a racist way, the subtext being that I am a white supremacist of some kind, is absolutely out-of-pocket and I will not tolerate it. I love my Black family and I love the diversity of BIPOC cultures in the U.S.