What’s Up, Everyone?
How are you all doing post Readathon week? I know a lot of people can get into reading slumps or experience reading burn out after readathons, but I hope that none of you are experiencing any of those awful things. If you are, it is totally fine. Everyone has a reading slump at some point or another. Just take some time off. Go outside. Listen to some music (I have just started listening to the soundtrack for Be More Chill the musical and so far it is really good. If you are looking for a Syfy musical, that feels sort of like Little Shop of Horrors and Dear Evan Hansen had a musical child *sort of*, I recommend listening to Be More Chill. So far my favorite songs are Michael in the Bathroom, which I can play on the ukulele if you bring it up 3 steps, the Squip song and Let’s Save the Pitiful Children. I appreciate Be More Chill because the composers took the soundtracks of Syfy/Horror movies and blended them with technology, rock and contemporary Broadway ballads. Anyway, I digress…) You will get back into reading eventually.
I start back to college in a week and a half, so I am desperately trying to get as much reading done as I can before I go back. One of my very good friends, the same one who recommended Challenger Deep and Food: a Love Story to me also recommended that I pick up Scythe by Neal Shusterman. I had seen this book a couple of times on Booktube right when it came out. I think the only time that I can actually pinpoint was in one of Christine (from Polandbananasbooks) haul’s from the end of summer last year. However, I haven’t seen many people talking about this book. Which is surprising because it is really good!
The Plot:
The story takes place in a utopian future where the Cloud of our present has been adapted into a supercomputer/sentient mind called the Thunderdome that rules over the world. It has replaced the government and has propelled the world so far forward that people no longer die, there isn’t a substantial poverty gap, and the environmental problems of the present have been solved. Everything is wonderful! However, because people can no longer die, the population of the world is ever expanding and the planet would be overpopulated if it wasn’t for an organization called the Scythedome. The Scythedome is a group of people who are chosen to kill people randomly (according to a code of seven rules that they must live by). The Scythedome is the last part of the world that the Thunderdome can not intervene in and vice versa, because death is a uniquely humane thing that must be performed by people. There are other specifics and ways that the Scythedome works, but it is a pretty complicated system and it varies from Honorable Scythe to Honorable Scythe (The Scythe’s have the highest status in society and they chose their names after Honorable Historians of the Past when they join the Scythedome), but this is the general gist of the system. Our main characters, Citra and Rowan, are two teens who are chosen by another scythe, Honorable Scythe Faraday, as his apprentices in the hopes that one of them will become a scythe at the end of their training.
The Highs:
I enjoyed the way that Neal Shusterman established the world of the Scythedome. Killing from my perspective is obviously wrong. Therefore, for the first couple of pages, it was difficult to event get through the book because of how death was viewed in the Scythe society. However, once I more used to the idea that I was going to read a 400+ page book about a lot of people dying in various unpleasant ways (because I will warn you, a lot of people die in this book. A lot), then I was able to focus on the obvious ethical debate that was at hand. How should scythes kill? Which ways are more humane? Should you be a public scythe or should you stay in the shadows and live a life of necessity rather than luxury? What do you do with the families of those you have gleaned? How do you treat them? There are a lot of moral and ethical questions that must be answered and each Honorable Scythe that we encounter in Scythe seems to have their own way of answering these questions. There is even a divide between an “old school” and “new school” approach to gleaning (what the Scythe’s call killing) in the Scythedome that is discussed throughout the novel. Even though it is clear which school of taught our characters consider the most ethical and compassionate, Shusterman still lays out all aspects of each side of the debate so that the reader may decide for themselves. I appreciate this alot, because as uncomfortable as I was reading a book about death and killing people, I thought that it was interesting to unpack the philosophies behind how the Scythedome came to be and how the scythes chose to perform their duties. I would imagine that this aspect of the novel would become very dry for someone who is not interested in the morals of why the Scythe do what they do. As the novel is mostly centered on the training of new scythes in the philosophies of the Scythedome so that they will be able to chose “the way they will go” when they are on their own, I wouldn’t recommend this book to people who are more interested in the action parts of the Scythe world and less interested in why they do what they do. However, there were some pretty awesome actions scenes scattered throughout the novel, so it isn’t all philosophy. In addition to the action scenes, there were also many twists and turns throughout the novel. I will say that some of them are predictable. You can’t make every twist one that 100% of readers are going to be shocked by. It just isn’t going to happen. However, I don’t think that the predictability of some of the twists diminished my overall enjoyment of the story, which commonly happens with other YA books that I read. The other twists were total surprises though. There were some that came out of left field and I genuinely didn’t know how they were going to be resolved.
There is also a love story in this novel. Surprise, surprise right? A boy and a girl are forced to hang out together in close quarters for an extended period of time while following a code that explicitly states that they can not fall in love and they end up falling in love? No one saw that coming? *obvious sarcasm is obvious* I know. If you are like me, the moment you see a girl and a boy mentioned on the inside jacket of a book you think,”Oh no. Here we go again!” However, Neal Shusterman creates a surprisingly convincing and non-cringe worthy love story out of a situation that could have been very cliche. Citra and Rowan’s relationship develops in a genuine way and they have actual chemistry throughout the novel. She doesn’t just fall in love with him because he is the only guy in her general vicinity. They are also more than their relationship. They are both incredibly dynamic characters, especially Rowan, who grow together over the course of the novel. I thought that their relationship was done leaps and bounds better than the majority of YA romances that I have read. Way to go Neal Shusterman!
The Lows:
I did feel that Scythe dragged a bit in places, at least for me. Some of the storylines could have been shortened or resolved in a more satisfying manner (Esme). I often found myself pushing through the book in hopes that another Conclave would be coming up soon because they usually promised some action. The last 200 pages held more action than the first 200 pages did, which was a nice change in pace.
Although I did enjoy where Citra and Rowan’s gleaning storyline took the plot, it’s initial establishment seemed a little arbitrary. Dame of Death Curie does mention many times that Citra and Rowan’s gleaning is bigger than the two of them. It is also obvious that Honorable Scythe Goddard wants to put on a show and make an example of the “old ways of gleaning” which Honorable Scythe Faraday represents. However, it did just seem like no one was protesting Citra and Rowan’s gleaning and that it was just happening for kicks and giggles. It was still an enjoyable plot line though.
Finally, I found some of the characters, specifically Honorable Scythe Goddard and Esme, to be static characters. It is obvious that Goddard is not good from the very beginning. He is blood thirsty. He is narcissistic. He also remains this way for the majority of the book. Esme isn’t like Goddard, she just doesn’t get enough of a personality after the chapter written through her POV to be dynamic. It is common for novels with many characters to have at least one or two static characters. Not everyone can have character development and in the end, I felt satisfied with the development of Citra, Rowan, Faraday and Curie enough where I didn’t really care about Goddard or Esme. Even Honorable Scythe Volta had a surprising amount of character development. Esme and Goddard just felt particularly static to me while I was reading Scythe.
Overall, I gave Scythe a 4 ½ out of 5 stars. I think that it is an incredibly unique concept for a book that was well executed, enjoyable and it made me think quite a lot. As it is my third Neal Shusterman book, I can definitely say that he is one of my favorite authors. I am glad that I have given two books by him, on two very different sides of the spectrum, a whirl this summer.
-Jaime