Scythe by Neal Shusterman – Rachel Book Review

Oh look! It’s another young adult trilogy set in a near-perfect future alternative United States! How perfect for me. Scythe is an awesome first entry in a new to me trilogy from Neal Shusterman. We are dropped into a future world where all diseases, accidents, and aging is no longer an issue. When people get too old, they basically press a button and become young again. All of society is controlled by the benevolent “cloud” which is an omnipresent internet collection that we are told is good.

The cloud controls everything but Scythes, a group of people who have a mandate to kill a certain percentage of the population to keep population growth under control. Scythes have an annual quota, strict code of conduct, but can kill at random unless their target would cross the code. There is a rigorous onboarding process to become a Scythe, as our two main characters Citra and Rowan discover when they become apprenticed to a Scythe.

I won’t give away too much of the plot or rules of this futuristic setting, because I really enjoyed Shusterman’s world-building. Some Scythes kill after extensive research on a target. Some Scythes kill at random and seem to derive something like pleasure from killing, which is not at all encouraged. When the Scythe governance becomes split…Citra and Rowan are at the center of it all.

Thankfully all of the books in this trilogy are written and available for me to read immediately. However, the second book has a twenty-week waiting list at my library, so I will be patient before I dive in to book two. If you like young adult futuristic novels as I do, you will probably like Scythe. It was a fun easy read and I am definitely going to read more of Shusterman’s back catalog too!

Some stats, as I like stats: