Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Summary from Goodreads:

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.

Review:

I devoured this book. I really needed it too. I was stuck in Logan airport waiting an extra seven hours for a delayed flight. I read the whole book (and had a lot of food and wine that night). Any way, I really needed a good book to distract me from the awful waiting. This was perfect.

The idea for this book was unlike anything I’d read before. It was so cool to see a world where mortality wasn’t an issue. This author really came up with some amazing side effects for a world where this could be possible. He created kids who purposely did stupid things, so they could “splat” and be put together again. He created “turning the corner” so all people could become younger again. He  thought about things like art and music and how nothing would be quite as good without the fear of death.

This was a well thought out world. I loved getting the snipbits from othe scythe’s journals. I loved seeing how each scythe had their own method of handling the worst job ever. I loved the idea of power hungry scythes taking advantage of their power (in a world where power kind of ceased to matter).

I also loved the super fast-paced plot. I needed to know what would happen the whole time. Who was going to make it? Would my ship happen? Would one of them really have to die? And what on earth happened to their first mentor? I had so many questions. And there were so many twists and turns. I called some of them, but not all of them and I was pleasantly surprised overall by how much I got into the plot.

The one thing I wished was a little better was the character development. I never really felt like I knew either main character too well. Maybe I knew Rowan a little bit more. And at first I thought this was intentional because I thought one of them would have to die and maybe I wasn’t supposed to get so attached, but I kind of wished I was a bit more attached. I did ship the characters more than I thought I would. And I liked how that was setup.

There was a definite Hunger Games feel, with some background noise of Shusterman’s famous Unwind. It both felt like a familiar dystopia and something entirely its own. And I liked this a lot. All in all, this was great. I loved the world, the fast paced plot, the twists and turns, and all the layers to this story. I would have given this a slightly higher score if the characters were developed a bit more. But, really, this was a fantastic read. I give it a 9/10.