Scythe - Krishna Jaswal

Without the threat of suffering, we can’t experience true joy.    

In the year 2042, humans have become immortal by discovering the ability to revive and heal people and the government is replaced with the Thunderhead. The Thunderhead is an artificial intelligence “cloud” that possesses some compassion and sympathy for humans but also rules over the world solving global problems like climate change, diseases, crime, etc. Due to humans becoming immortal, a new organization, Scythedom, rises to control the deaths of humans. Scythes glean (kill) people at random; they have to meet a certain number of gleanings per year to keep their position and follow many other rules. Scythes are also immortal and aren’t supposed to be killed by their fellow scythes. They keep their youth by “turning the corner” when they reach a certain age which means changing their appearance to look younger. 

One day Scythe Faraday shows up at 17-year-old Citra Terranova’s house and invites himself to have dinner with her family. After being terrified that he’s going to glean her family, Citra snaps angrily and asks me why he’s here. He breaks and tells them that he’s actually here to glean their neighbor. A similar thing happens to Rowan Damisch; Scythe Faraday shows up at his school to glean the school’s star quarterback and Rowan is asked by Faraday to lead him to the office to retrieve the quarterback. Soon after both Citra and Rowan receive tickets to a theater show. They go out of curiosity and it turns out that Scythe Faraday had organized the whole thing to ask them to be his apprentices. The twist is that only one of them will become a scythe. 

Both Rowan and Citra undergo their training as they see the inner part of Scythedom, its problems with power, the ethical and moral dilemmas about how to choose who dies, and the corruption in the organization. They are tangled into a web of political problems of the world and face challenges that come with their new roles.

Scythe is a dystopian novel set in the future written by Neal Shusterman that is part of a trilogy. The other two books are out but for this blog, I just chose to talk about Scythe because of how deep and important it is to the whole series. Scythe does really set the mood and tone for the whole series. I read Scythe back in 7th grade and I’m always down to reread it. Neal Shusterman's writing is easy to follow (which is another reason I liked it so much) and helps create suspense throughout the novel. I found Scythe to be very interesting because of the storyline and dystopian setting. The problems that Shusterman also decided to highlight throughout the novel are pretty interesting. 

Overall, Scythe is an amazing thought-triggering novel that explores mortality, morality, a world where death does not come naturally, and the dangers that come when one tries to control everything and anything. I would rate it a solid 9/10 and highly recommend it if you like dystopian novels that explore lots of “what ifs.”