Description
A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) Two teens must learn the “art of killing” in this Printz Honor–winning book, the first in a chilling new series from Neal Shusterman, author of the New York Times bestselling Unwind dystology. A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery: humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now Scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control. Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own. Scythe is the first novel of a thrilling new series by National Book Award–winning author Neal Shusterman in which Citra and Rowan learn that a perfect world comes only with a heavy price.
Robin Snyder –
What if you could kill people and be Death himself., What if cancer and all the worlds diseases were healed and our understanding of how to heal everybody was so great that you could pretty much save anyone from practically anything that would have killed them., What if you could totally turn back the clock so that even though you are fifty-two or seventy-five you could look like you were in your twenties., What if there was nothing like war, poverty or hunger because artificial intelligence wasn’t a bad thing and it was better at running the world than the politicians and warmongers., **** The greatest achievement of the human race was not conquering death. It was ending government. Back in the days when the world’s digital network was called “the cloud,” people thought giving too much power to an artificial intelligence would be a very bad idea. Cautionary tales abounded in every form of media. The machines were always the enemy. But then the cloud evolved into the Thunderhead, sparking with consciousness, or at least a remarkable facsimile. In stark contrast to people’s fears, the Thunderhead did not seize power. Instead, it was people who came to realize that it was far better suited to run things than politicians. ****, What if selected humans were now charged with culling the population and causing the deaths of those chosen. That they themselves had to choose who to kill and perform the execution becoming walking death., What if you were chosen to be apprenticed to one of these people and learn how to kill., What if…… well you get the gist., I used to read a lot of YA but after a while so much of it seemed the same. After the fifteenth time in the book someone released a breath they didn’t know they were holding or dollface’s eyes became darker (cuz that is what happens when you lust after someone) and she threw away everything special about herself for Jerkwad A I was over it. But then I found Neal Shusterman (NS). I think that NS is the king of what if…. He takes something from our society today and tweaks it extremely to the best/worst case scenario and TaH-DaH magic., Neal Shusterman has been on my autobuy list since I read his Unwind series which is my favorite completely YA and Dystopian series to date. While this is completely different in the world and the characters one thing remains the same. This book is for people who like to ponder the “what ifs” of the world and society. Like…., *** To date, the oldest living human being is somewhere around three hundred, but only because we are still so close to the Age of Mortality. I wonder what life will be like a millennium from now, when the average age will be nearer to one thousand. Will we all be renaissance children, skilled at every art and science, because we’ve had the time to master them? Or will boredom and slavish routine plague us even more than it does today, giving us less of a reason to live limitless lives? I dream of the former, but suspect the latter. ****, This story follows Rowan and Cirta as they start their internship of a year with Sythe Faraday learning everything there is to know about what it takes to be a killer of men. Which is less about learning how to kill, although there is some of that, and more about finding a path they can live with. Watching people die isn’t as easy as one would think. There are moral quandaries and it seems that not all the Scythes believe in the same things. Could it be in this society where a fraction of the people die compared to the Age of Mortality that there are things going on in the politics of death that might lead to disaster???, As the story delves into the deeper politics of death and how the world might be changing I liked seeing how a few of the different Scythes treated the responsibility of killing and how each seemed to have a different process and a different way to deal with families and after affects. People are people and it seems that if you give some of them enough power corruption is bound to bleed through., There is a very small aspect of romance between a few characters but nothing overdone and it is definitely not the focal point of the story. The focal point is the society and how Citra and Rowan are trying to find a way to change it in their own way or else one might have to kill the other at the end of the apprenticeship., There is a little bit of time needed for the set up to the story but there was also enough going on that I never lost interest. I became emotionally connected to Rowan and Citra in their very different struggles and I really enjoyed all the world details that made be question if you could live forever would you really want to?, This will be a duology or I prefer the term duet and I was extremely shocked but some of the happenings going into the final quarter of the book. But I adore where the book let off for the next installment and I am really excited to see what Shusterman has planned since there seemed to be some beginnings to a few things and with NS anything can happen and you will probably find your jaw on the floor when it does., ***Rating Explainantion:***, This is probably closer to a 4.25 read but I kept thinking about it days later because I love the What If of the story and I know what NS is capable of so it is a 5 star read for me.
Schizanthus Nerd –
“Hope in the shadow of fear is the world’s most powerful motivator.”, This book became one of my favourite reads of all time when I met Citra and Rowan five years ago. Since then I’ve wanted to visit them again but, like all of the books I’ve fallen in love with as an adult, I’ve procrastinated my reread. I wanted to hold onto the love at first read that I experienced. I was concerned that the shine wouldn’t be there the second time around., I needn’t have worried. I didn’t think it possible but the reread shone even brighter for me. The characters I knew and loved, and those I loved to hate, came to me fully formed; I didn’t need to reacquaint myself with them, even after all of this time., Citra and Rowan have been selected to undertake an apprenticeship. They will be spending the next year competing against one another for a job neither of them want. Ironically, this makes them the perfect candidates. Although they are both going to be trained by Scythe Faraday, their apprenticeships will be vastly different., Theirs is a world of splats and revival centres, where nanites can dull your pain but also limit the spectrum of your emotions. It’s also a world where serial killers are not only sanctioned but revered. Here they’re called scythes and their kills aren’t murder; they’re gleanings., Scythes have a quota of 260 gleanings per year. While this sounds like death is around every corner, your odds of being gleaned in the next 100 years are only 1 in 100., On the one hand, I have trouble imagining living in a world where we know everything there is to know and have conquered disease and mortality itself. On the other hand, I was fully immersed in Citra and Rowan’s world. I believed., I imagined the joy of having time to learn everything I wanted to learn, read all of the books on my TBR list and experience everything I’ve ever dreamed of. But because time’s no longer finite, the urgency of our world doesn’t exist in Citra and Rowan’s. There’s nothing left to strive towards, nothing new to discover., “With nothing to really aspire to, life has become about maintenance. Eternal maintenance.”, I adored Scythe Faraday, with his thoughtful, compassionate approach. I loved the excerpts from scythes’ journals that caused me to think more deeply about their world as well as our own. I’m still chewing on the philosophical and moral issues raised in this book., Favourite no context quote: “Well, she could learn self-control tomorrow. Today she wanted pizza.”, This remains one of my favourite books of all time. I can’t wait to binge the rest of the series.