Ashley's Reviews > Carve the Mark

Well that didn't last long... DNF at 14%.

Here's my timeline of events:

- Pretty excited about the book. SPACE! STAR WARS?! UNIQUE POWERS!

- Find out there are problems with the book with regards to ablesim and racism.

- Kind of like, "Shit, that sucks.." but still thinking I'd like to read it to see it all myself.

- But then I'm legit kind of afraid of admitting that I'm reading the book.. mostly because what if I like it? Should I be ashamed if that happens? Would that make me a bad person?

- Decide, "what the hell" and just read it.

...then...

I'm just bored out of my mind? I didn't even get to the problematic bits because I was just so fucking bored.

Now, I only got 14% through so I can't judge the book too much, but here are my impressions:

- We were immediately bombarded with like 10 different characters (slight exaggeration.. maybe more like 5-6) with weird names... all in the first few pages. It was like Akos and his mom, his dad, their brother(s? - I don't even know), maybe there was a sister too, then some random friend, then some other guy from school... I don't even know if I'm way off base explaining this because I just go so lost with the HUUUGE rush of people, names, and who was who with relation to which person.. ugh. I can only handle so many new people at once so early on in a book.

- The MC I saw the most of (Akos) was a bit too young for my reading preferences (14). He seemed young to me at first and I started wondering, "how old is this guy?" then it quickly came up that he was 14. Not a huge deal, but at least in those beginning pages it gave the character more of an MG vibe rather than a YA one.

- It didn't feel like Star Wars. Maybe this part comes later, but it felt more like it took place in some random fantasy world rather than "space". A few times they mentioned that there were other planets, but... I don't know... it just wasn't exciting or didn't feel important. Maybe because in the part I read they were on a planet (rather than, like, in a space ship) and space talk/travel didn't seem to be a big deal. It was mentioned maybe once, but wasn't something people were always talking about, so it's almost like it wasn't there. So they were just on a planet, which could have just been Earth for all I know.

- I was just bored. There's no other way to put it. I wasn't interested. My eyes were glazing over. I didn't care. There wasn't anything interesting. I only got Akos and a small bit of Cyra but neither of them drew me in. They were just kind of dull.