This book is great!
For the first few chapters, I thought it was sort of like The Golden Compass, since the two main characters were still small and the people travelled between multiple worlds. There was lots of magic, and it was all about "the current that flows through every living object", which felt sort of like the Dust in Philip Pullman's books.
However, after that, the story became a lot like Divergent (no surprise there) but with a touch of royalty and castles, as well as technology. Most of the time, when authors write such books which have a mixture of so much - kings, magic, technology, space travel, wars, culture and still have a lot of the typical YA fantasy drama - they end up sounding stupid.
But this book has just the right amount of everything, and it will appeal to book lovers (or non-book lovers) or all sorts; those who love reading about royalty, or those who like magic, those who like sci-fi and technology, or interplanetary travel, or those who like books about friendship, love, loyalty and trust; and of course, those who love everything.
Everyone in their universe has a "currentgift", a special power in the people due to the current flowing around (and through) them. Every gift is different from the other, and discovering each character's currentgift as the story proceeded, also added some level of suspense and excitement.
This book also contained a lot of war and the enmity-between-kingdoms theme. The main guy character (Akos) was from a place called Thuvhe and the girl (Cyra) was from a kingdom called Shotet. Both of them were fate-favoured (which means that their fates had been seen by the Oracles during birth, and there was no avoiding them), and thus considered special.
Cyra was the sister of the ruler of Shotet while Akos was the son of the "Sitting Oracle" of Thuvhe. When soldiers from Shotet come for the oracle and find that she is not there, they take her second-born child instead, who is "fated" to be the next Oracle. Akos, as it turns out, has Shotet blood in him, and is also captured by the soldiers, and whisked off with his brother to their enemy land.
The title 'Carve the Mark' refers to the ink-filled mark that the Shotet people, and now Akos, make on their arm to record a loss of a loved one or a murder they have committed. It is sometimes equated to the status or skill of a person since a kill mark shows their prowess in combat.
This book has all the best-selling YA genres mixed into one fantastic tale, and I'm very eager to read book 2.
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