Caraval by Stephanie Garber: Too much hype

Caraval

 by 

Stephanie Garber

Sisters Scarlett and Donatella have never left their island home. There are two reason for this. The first is that they live in some undisclosed time and place where women can’t so much as walk on their own. The second is that their father is an abusive son of a gun who can and has killed people in order to keep his daughters at home. Fun times. Shortly before Scarlett becomes involved in an arranged marriage, which she hopes will at least get her and her sister away from their father if nothing else, she is invited to Caraval: magical circus. Caraval is mildly less murder-y than the Hunger Games, and it only happens once every year. The invited participants compete in dastardly puzzles and adventures that lead to the grand prize. This year’s prize is a wish. At the urging* (*read as the well-intentioned kidnapping) of her sister, Scarlett and Donatella sneak off to the Caraval to join the show. But, of course, as soon as they arrive Donatella is kidnapped by the games author, Legend, and secreted away as part of the game. With five days to find her sister, Scarlett bravely . . . trips all over things, gets absurdly obsessed with some sailor, and makes every mistake known to man. Oh boy, it’s going to be one of those reviews.

Characters

Scarlett: Scarlett is an idiot. I’m sorry but she is. The ‘game’ she was participating in gave her these clues to solve in order to find her sister. I swear a two-year-old could've solved these riddles. Heck! They aren’t even really riddles! And don’t even get me started on the ‘rhyming’ because it could barely be called rhyming. Which you know what, fine. That’s fine. But for goodness sakes Scarlett, please, just be just a little bit dependent. Just a bit. It’s not that hard, maybe start by figuring out how to tie your own shoes first. Okay, I’m sorry, that was unnecessary. There was this subplot in Caraval about how Scarlett and her sister were abused by their father, so, in theory, it makes sense for her to be timid and unsure. With respect to the plot, it’s extremely frustrating. Honestly, the whole thing feels like there was zero thought put into the real-life symptoms of abuse. Everything was just over the top dramatic and stereotypical.

Julian: speaking of over the top and stereotypical. Sorry, cheap shot. But this one is kind of warranted. It’s only been a day or two since I finished Caraval, and the multitude of detailed descriptions of Julian’s abs, face, hands, [insert whatever body part hasn’t been mentioned too recently] is honestly the only thing I can remember about him. And, sorry Stephanie Garber, but that plot twist at the end wasn’t enough to switch Julian from eye candy to well-rounded character. It came far too late and far too out of left field to boot.

Donatella: this is the textbook example of a plot device character. She is boring. Her purpose is to show up for the first few chapters in hopes of getting us invested in her wellbeing and then being shunted off to be held captive for the rest of the plot.

Likes

There’s some beautiful description: Personally, this would actually be one of my dislikes. But I’m aware that a crap ton of people raved about the description so I folded. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate a poetic line just as much as the next person. But ultimately, I’m really more of a substance over splendor kind of gal. For me, the overly purple prose-y description got real old real fast. Oops, this was supposed to be a ‘like’, it’s turned into more of a rant. There’s just a lot of odd description involving feelings as colors and foggy imagery. It gets on my nerves.

Dislikes

Everything is a lie

 this bugs me the most. Because the whole ‘nothing is real’ crap should have been a like. It should have been interesting to be dropped into a game where no one knows the rules and no one knows what’s real and what isn’t. Except literally nothing was real, and there were no rules! And not in a fun “Alice in Wonderland” kind of way. It’s more in a "there are no consequences to screwing up because you’re the main character and logic bends backwards to make your actions justifiable and you aren’t allowed to complain because there are no rules kind of way..." I apologize. That was kind of long. But that, right there, is annoying as heck. Because no matter what happened in the story you knew from past behavior that the ‘everything is a lie’ thing would be used to the protagonist advantage instead of their disadvantage.

Note from the Editor: Dude, it's a cop-out. The whole situation keeps the writer from having to write in responsibility and consequences. Also, perhaps the reason that the "no rules" and "what's true, what's not" devices were not entertaining in this respect is because we are meant to fear the moment when the protagonist stumbles upon a rule or truth that they were hiding from.

The worldbuilding was clearly put together with scotch tape: I get it. world building is complicated. You have to explain the close up world without getting info-dump-y while also hinting at the fact that there’s so much more the protagonist hasn’t seen in hopes of giving it a sense of scale. But you can’t just give us nothing and expect me to be okay with that. I know that Scarlett and Donatella are on some island called the Conquered Islands and that’s it. Seriously! Caraval is even on another island! One that is never given a name! I have so many questions and not one of them were answered.

Where are we? Nobody seems to have green skin so we’re probably on earth. But there’s magic! but nobody really believes in magic for some reason? Why? Why does nobody believe in magic if wishes are a legit prize on Legend’s magical traveling circus-thing? What the heck are the conquered isles? Who conquered them? It was the Romans! They conquered everything... Was it the Huns? Aliens!? How should I know? What even is the freaking time period? The book talked about bustles and crap; but as far as I could tell there wasn’t any other Victorian-esque stuff, like automobiles or pistols.  I just have literally no idea what going on at all in this book. Because the worldbuilding was nonexistent and Caraval had it’s famous ‘everything is a lie’ so for all I know Legend is a bored alien occupier and Scarlett is a piece of anthropomorphic wood. Oh, wait, that last one was true.

Okay, that was a low blow I must admit. This book was just too hyped. I’m saying that and I was barely involved in the hype! It’s a sugary, romance-y book that exists inside a bubble of protagonist centered plot and flowery descriptions. It's probably a fine book, if you like that sort of stuff. But, personally, I’m not interested.