40 Fun Facts About Carve the Mark

What does Cyra Noavek's currentgift in Carve the Mark force her to endure and let her inflict by touch?

Constant pain is Cyra's burden and her weapon: dark shadows move under her skin, and Ryzek forces her to turn her touch on his enemies as a method of torture.

What unusual power lets Akos Kereseth touch Cyra Noavek without being hurt by her currentgift?

He blocks the current: Akos's touch stills the energy behind every gift, so Cyra's shadows fall quiet. He first discovers it when he breaks free of his restraints during his capture.

On which part of the body do the Shotet in Carve the Mark carve a mark for each life lost?

The arm carries a Shotet's record of lives: each cut, made with a blade, stands for a life, and a hash through the mark sets a loss the bearer grieves apart from a kill.

Carve the Mark was written by Veronica Roth, the author of which bestselling trilogy set in a future Chicago?

Divergent was Roth's debut, written while she was still a creative writing student, and its trilogy has sold more than 35 million copies worldwide.

Which 2018 novel by Veronica Roth is the sequel to Carve the Mark, continuing Akos and Cyra's story?

The Fates Divide arrived in April 2018 and widens the telling, giving chapters to Akos's sister as well as to the two leads.

The publisher of Carve the Mark described Veronica Roth's novel as being in the vein of which film saga?

Star Wars was the comparison made when the books were announced, with the plot summed up as the story of a boy who forms an unlikely alliance with an enemy.

Whose accidental killing by the young Cyra Noavek does Ryzek use to blackmail her in Carve the Mark?

Her mother died when Cyra lashed out with her gift as a child. Ryzek keeps the secret as a threat, then tells the Shotet the truth to turn them against her.

Which brother of Akos Kereseth is kidnapped with him because he is fated to become Thuvhe's next oracle?

Eijeh is the prize of the raid: Ryzek wants an oracle of his own, hoping that visions of the future will show him a way to escape his fate.

Which word best describes Thuvhe, the homeland of Akos Kereseth in Veronica Roth's Carve the Mark?

Frozen Thuvhe is so cold that its people wrap up in coats of pale kutyah fur and prize iceflowers, hardy blooms they brew into potions.

At what stage of life does a currentgift usually first emerge in Veronica Roth's Carve the Mark?

In adolescence, the current is said to take the shape of its bearer's character, so a gift can turn out for better or, as Cyra finds, for worse.

What can the Shotet tyrant Ryzek Noavek do with a deliberate touch, thanks to his currentgift in Carve the Mark?

To trade memories, Ryzek needs only a touch: he hands over his own in exchange for someone else's, and he tries it on Akos's captive brother in the hope of taking on an oracle's sight.

Ryzek Noavek is fated to fall to which family, whose twin daughters include the chancellor of Thuvhe?

Benesit is the name Ryzek dreads: he forbids the Shotet to speak of his fate in public and seizes an oracle in the hope of finding a way around it.

Which enforcer of Ryzek Noavek kills the Kereseth boys' father during the raid that opens Carve the Mark?

Vas is Ryzek's chief henchman, and Akos swears to kill him. The two finally meet beneath the arena at the novel's climax, where Akos keeps that promise.

Which twin sister of Ori, scarred across the face by a Shotet blade, is the chancellor of Thuvhe?

Isae was raised in hiding aboard a ship that roamed the galaxy, and she and Ori covered the lower half of their faces so that no one could tell the twins apart.

Which hallucination-causing plant fills the wide expanse that separates the Shotet from the Thuvhesit in Carve the Mark?

Feathergrass is a tall grass whose visions make the border between the two peoples dangerous to cross, and the Shotet also ferment it into a drink.

What do the Shotet in Carve the Mark call their yearly voyage to scavenge on another planet?

The sojourn honors the Shotet's past as wanderers: after a week-long festival, a vast ship follows the current to a planet where they gather what its people no longer need.

Which water-covered planet does Ryzek Noavek choose for the Shotet's scavenging voyage, hoping to win an alliance?

Pitha, the water planet, develops weapons, which is why Ryzek overrules the Examiners who would normally read the current to choose the destination.

Which red iceflower, toxic even in small doses, do the Thuvhesit of Carve the Mark celebrate at the Blooming?

Hushflower is poisonous in tiny quantities yet sacred to the Thuvhesit, and Akos has such a strong resistance to it that he can chew whole petals.

Which color do the Shotet of Carve the Mark hold sacred, while their Thuvhesit neighbors consider it cursed?

Blue reflects the shade of the current for the Shotet, so at their biggest festival it covers faces, hair, clothes and decorations.

In which poor Thuvhesit city, built around a hill with a temple at the top, does Akos Kereseth grow up?

Hessa is one of Thuvhe's three major cities; most of its buildings are circular, with a military base at the foot of the hill and the temple at the summit.

In Carve the Mark the Thuvhesit call their shared planet Thuvhe, but what name do the Shotet use?

Urek is the Shotet name, but the rest of the galaxy says Thuvhe, because the Thuvhesit are the only people on the planet who are recognized as a nation.

What is the name of the Shotet capital in Carve the Mark, where the Noavek family rules from its manor?

Voa is home to the arena where Shotet challenges are settled, and the great ship the Shotet fly to other planets is said to be as big as the city itself.

Which interplanetary governing body in Carve the Mark is based aboard a large traveling spaceship?

The Assembly keeps order between the nation-planets, regulating commerce, weapons and travel, though some in the galaxy have begun to suspect it of corruption.

After the rite of nemhalzak strips Cyra Noavek of her status, what may any Shotet do to her?

Duel her to the death: Cyra beats challenger after challenger in the arena until Ryzek's right-hand man almost kills her, and she is rescued just in time.

Which former Shotet ruler, long believed dead, is revealed to be alive at the end of Carve the Mark?

Lazmet, the father of Ryzek, was thought to have been killed in an attack on a scavenging voyage, and it was he who trained his son in cruelty.

Which rebel mechanic in Carve the Mark wears a patch over the eye that Ryzek Noavek took from her?

Teka can control electrical objects: she cuts the lights in a corridor of the great Shotet ship to ambush Cyra, and the two later join forces against Ryzek.

Which sister of Akos Kereseth has a currentgift that puts the people around her at ease?

Cisi pays a price for her gift: she is unable to say anything that might make others uncomfortable, and she cannot cry in front of them.

Which Shotet in Carve the Mark asks Akos to kill his abusive father, Suzao, in an arena challenge?

Jorek works in maintenance aboard the great Shotet ship; with Cyra's help, he and Akos slip Suzao sleeping potions to provoke him into issuing the challenge.

Which oracle of Thuvhe raises Akos Kereseth and teaches him to brew potions from iceflowers?

Sifa is Thuvhe's sitting oracle. Every nation-planet has three, one rising, one sitting and one falling, and all of them see a fate at the same moment.

Because the Shotet tyrant uses her to torture his enemies, Cyra Noavek earns which grim nickname in Carve the Mark?

Ryzek's Scourge is what the Shotet call Cyra, who has no friends when the story begins and fills her solitude with study, learning several languages.

What does Cyra Noavek teach Akos in Carve the Mark in exchange for lessons in brewing a soothing potion?

Fighting is Cyra's side of the bargain: Akos wants the skill so that he can escape and return to Thuvhe, though he refuses to leave without his brother.

Unlike her earlier trilogy, Veronica Roth planned the Carve the Mark story as what kind of series?

A duology was the plan from the start: the publishing deal announced in March 2015 already covered both books, almost two years before the first came out.

Publishers Weekly called Veronica Roth's Carve the Mark a gripping example of which science-fiction subgenre?

Space opera suits a story that ranges across a whole system of nation-planets, and the same review praised Roth's worldbuilding for making each nation distinct.

Which publisher announced its deal for Carve the Mark in 2015 and released Veronica Roth's novel in January 2017?

HarperCollins issued the novel through its Katherine Tegen Books imprint and launched it around the world in 33 languages on the same day.

Which actor, a former Nickelodeon and Disney Channel regular, voices Akos's chapters in the Carve the Mark audiobook?

Austin Butler reads Akos opposite Emily Rankin's Cyra, in a recording made years before his portrayal of Elvis Presley brought him an Oscar nomination.

Veronica Roth traced the world-building of Carve the Mark to five months she spent living in which European country?

Romania is where Roth and her husband moved soon after their wedding, with no particular plan, and she later saw that the novel's setting came together after that stay.

Zivatahak, the Shotet school of combat that Akos favors in Carve the Mark, is known as the school of the what?

Heart is the school that prizes speed and endurance, and the Shotet adapted it from the warrior-ascetics of the planet Zold.

Reflecting their past as wanderers, where do the Shotet of Carve the Mark lay their dead to rest?

Among the stars is where the Shotet bury their own, a nod to their nomadic roots, while the Thuvhesit burn theirs on stacked wood and burnstones.

Thuvhesits in Carve the Mark split their year into the warm Awakening and which cold counterpart?

The Deadening gives the deadbird its name: the birds hibernate right through it, and whoever first found one asleep thought it had died.

Cyra Noavek narrates her own chapters of Carve the Mark, but how are the chapters that follow Akos told?

In the third person, Akos is kept at a distance that reviewers noticed: Kirkus found Cyra's own voice compelling and his chapters flat by comparison.