young adult, fantasy
Scythe takes place in a future world where the secret to
life has been discovered and no one dies naturally anymore. In fact, even unnatural deaths are easily
reversed. Additionally, people can remake
themselves younger. Therefore, to
control the world population, special people knowns as scythes have the job of
ending lives. Scythe Faraday selects two 10th graders to be his
apprentices—Rowan and Citra.
This novel’s premise was difficult for me to accept at
first. It’s one of those worlds that was
manufactured by the author, Neal Shusterman, in order to pose “what if”
questions, draw caution to possible extreme outcomes of today’s troubles, and
investigate human nature. In fact, the
only other Shusterman novel I had read (Unwind) was so implausible to me that I
could not enjoy it and I only gave it 1-1/2 stars. However, his novels are
widely admired. They just aren’t my cup of tea. So, I did my best to accept
this unlikely world in order to enjoy the story and mostly succeeded.
I was able to enjoy the characters and their dilemmas in
this one. I never felt any of it was real, but I was able to appreciate Citra
and Rowan as characters and wanted to know how things would turn out for
them. It did take me a long time to get
through it but not because I was bored. I just didn’t like wasting too much of
my time in Shusterman’s imagined world. The novel’s storyline picked up for me
at about the 25% mark and then really kicked into high gear for the last 25%
(although it became even MORE implausible in a way at that point). Yet, I was definitely rooting for the
characters and looked forward to finding out how the story ended. In this regard, I was satisfied. Of course,
there are two more novels in the series and I’m still undecided about whether
or not to read them.
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