Book Review Genre: Dystopian
Disclaimer: Reading is all about exploring new worlds, but this Book Review does not shy away from spoiling specific scenes as this is more of my free-flowing thoughts about a book.
The Analysis:
This has been on my TBR list since 2016. It’s never too late. But, let’s book review it. First, follow me on Goodreads.
Here’s The Blurb:
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.
Cover Critique:
Tad basic, but it gets the job done. The imagery depicts the important role of the scythes.
Now The Story:
Book Info:
Pages: 448
Author: Neal Shusterman
Available: Google Play
Things I learned from this novel.
• I dont want to have dinner with death.
• I dont want death at my funeral.
I’m using the term death (facetiously) but in the book, they’re called Scythes.
Scythe’s are professional grim reapers that have been given the benefits of a great PR package. Their duties: keep the growing population under the control by killing immortal humans thanks to the world’s great health care system. That being said, when we meet one he’s sitting down with what seems like a perfectly lovely family. Citra (our heroine) however gains my respect right away. She plucks my thoughts right out of my head. If you’ve come to kill someone or take them away, just do that. The small talk and then asking them to cook are all incredibly disrespectful. These people got some grieving and weeping to do. They’re not your temporary entertainment to make sure you don’t do the same.
Then we learn that he wasn’t actually there for them, but for their neighbor. Oh, I’m all in on reading this one. But I’m left with a bad taste about scythes. For one, if you command all this respect, would it not have behooved you to simply ask to have dinner with the family without the pretense of killing someone hanging over the guest’s head? The man’s excuse for not doing so is that everyone kisses his butt. But, thinking you’re going to die whilst having your last meal is a fair trade-off. Yeah, dude, you’re jaded.
What I do know is that I don’t like the scythes. Not for their job but for their carelessness with human emotion. Even God gives you a highlight reel (testimonials of life flashing before people’s eyes) before you die and some people do get to say goodbye to their loved ones. It’s the scythe’s coldness that’s too much for me.
This brings me back around to our main characters, Rowan and Citra. This is a YA novel. As much as I loved them, I’m kinda disappointed in that. Truthfully, I wonder how deeper this novel could have delved in the subject matter with people up in years with some experience under their belt. Even someone who has lived two lifetimes. What do they think? While our main characters were mature for their age. I read this knowing we were missing something deeper on the theme because of their youth.
But I do want to take a point off and here is where I will explain why. Our main characters are unceremoniously thrown into a competition that neither of them wants because they showed high moral character. This trope took me out of the story and revealed it as just that, a story. For some reason, I feel it would have been more authentic had they stumbled into this fraternity or volunteered to join freely. I also find the idea of an apprenticeship laughable. Especially for the way in which he chooses them and chooses to pick from them.
And despite repeated attempts to villanize an entire world for their reactions to scythes, I just can’t find fault with them. Sure the people who use bribery as a means to an end leave a bad taste in my mouth. But you can’t blame people for being rightly or wrongly scared of scythes. And changing their behavior accordingly. Especially knowing there are bad scythes out there who might do things for fame, glory, or simply because they want to.
And upon further thought, I understand the moral rules this scythe put in place to bring reverence to the job. There quite commendable. Yet, if I were on the receiving end of his gleaming I wouldn’t want any of it. The scythes killing people with a smile made more sense to me than this guy. At least their treachery was familiar. These rules like, I’m going to go to your funeral? What for? Gang members and mobsters go to the funerals of the people they killed too. I can’t see the respect. It’s just invasive.
When the ego-maniac scythes appear to wreak havoc, I just nodded. This makes sense.
Now, there is a Scythe that I enjoyed more than the others. Throughout the novel, there are journal entries from the past and the most renowned scythes sprinkled in. The ones I enjoyed the most usually belonged to Curie. So, when we get a glimpse into her teaching style, I’m pleasantly surprised. It’s her method that I enjoyed the most. She tries to gleam people that she thinks have had enough of the world. Afterward, she invites the family over and genuinely listens to all their fond memories of the person. Sometimes during the exchange, she gives the family a chance to seek out revenge or let it go. This seemed more genuine to me than anything Faraday taught our pair.
Things I learned from this portion of the novel.
• I don’t want to have dinner with death, but maybe my family should after my passing.
• I don’t want death at my funeral, but my family should be given closure.
Also, I grew in appreciation for the scythe of the old ways. His suicide turned murder was unfortunate. The more this world unfolded through the unorthodox methods of the other scythes, I began to realize what a loss this man’s death was for the world. Frankly, none of them should exist, but I wouldn’t trust gleaming to anyone but him. And my favorite. This is probably why I was so upset when his death was cheapened by the fact that he was very much alive. A fact I didn’t appreciate until he came to rescue Rowan later on in the book.
I’d rather have a mind that’s clear than one that’s right.”
Worst Quote Award: Spoken by a true villain, I don’t know how to make this statement make sense. Maybe cause I associate right with clear.
Rowans and Citra’s romance had me waiting for a Hunger Game-like ending that resembled movie 1 and it delivered. When Rowan came through with the loop whole for their fight to the death, I was cheering. There were many such moments that I was left cheering on behalf of our pair. But don’t expect any kisses or deep declarations of love. Our pair is just united toward one end and they do it, oh, so, well, together.
I was ready to give it a standing ovation at the sight of Rowan gleaming the entire Goodard clan. It was beautiful (unconventional) justice. But it was this moment that the story went back up to a five. Not because of the brutality that was in Hi-Def color, but because I was enjoying it enough to ignore the story’s more obvious faults.
It almost made me cry. Like when Citra has to glean her baby brother, my eyes were watering. I think it’s the boy’s innocence that did me in. And it was also the first time that I saw the entire organization as barbarians as opposed to a select misguided few.
The Ending: This book is not a cliffhanger. It leaves just enough intrigue in the last chapter to make you want to read on to book 2. However, all the storylines in book 1 are efficiently wrapped up and explained. Yet, it still will leave you feeling like you dropped off a cliff. There is no wrap up to it. After our pairs final test, its over.
There are a lot of topics that I feel were included in this novel as a way for the narrator to tackle these subjects from a sci-fi angle. The world according to…
The Solution to Scythe’s*:
I’m immediately introduced to a grandmother married to her third husband with a new baby. The difference is the ladies like hundreds of years old. And my first thought is, of course, the government puts a band-aid on a problem instead of outright fixing it. Why aren’t their age limits? After 200, you’re not allowed to have kids and after 400, you are automatically gleaned. You go into a gleaming hospital and folks can say goodbye then lights out. Doctors can do that. I’d liken scythes to no more than bounty hunters that take people back to gleaming hospitals. What’s with this weird lottery? It should be chronological like it’s always been. Of course, not everyone dies of old age, but now, everyone can. No one needs to live long enough to forget their birthday.
Thunderhead Is A No*:
But, the only thing I take a personal affront to is one of the narrator’s journal entries, explaining the phenomenon of Thunderhead. It’s the ‘Cloud’ on steroids and it now runs the government because it’s just better and more analytical. It’s clear the narrator never took the time to really sit and listen to the opposition. They clearly think people just saw a bunch of scary AI movies and don’t know what’s good for them.
Meanwhile, genuine concern prevents our AI overloads from taking a foothold the way the narrator would like. How about intrinsic bias? How about racism? There are tons of articles on simple AI programs meant to help with facial recognition and the like, that are extremely flawed because somebody forgot to upload a variety of POC faces, now everybody black looks the same. Or the AI that downloaded everything from Reddit and 50% of it was racist and antisemitic tropes and stereotypes. How about the fact that the only reason we don’t have minority report is that to build an AI out of statistical crime data that’s already inherently biased against black people because of racist cops would be a disaster for the black community? Tesla alone has proven that no one’s quite fixed the three laws to human life introduced (to the wider public) ironically in a movie by Will Smith, called AI. I never looked up whether or not that situation was solved. But last I heard they were trying to upload as many test situations as possible. [I don’t expect dystopian novels to be perfect representations of the twentieth century, but don’t trivialize the reason the gains you’re wishing for haven’t been made.]
Is Thunderhead god*:
Firstly, I don’t want or need a substitute for God, but atheists do. They don’t seem to realize how badly they want a relationship with him while denying that base need. In fact, the first sentence at 36% says, I want a relationship with Thunderhead. This all-seeing and all-knowing AI-like god figure. It also ends with this weird need to know if it considers scythes good people or not. Then at 52% Goodard calls Thunderhead a higher power. Then he goes on to espouse how he rejects that notion choosing to be the higher power over himself. Not to mention, when we finally meet Thunderhead it is as a cloud, Biblical God style. If this ain’t some deja vu.
[But I don’t know the religious beliefs of the author and this may be intentional. From a Christian standpoint, I wouldn’t recommend this interpretation in comparison to let’s say, The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe. For the simple fact that this God is MADE and the one true God, just IS. We’re taught over and over in biblical text that a God can’t be conjured up with a hammer and screw. Unless given direct permission like with the Tesseract.]Reviving Centers*:
Proof that people do die, but they’re just brought back. If the population needs to decrease for self-preservation purposes, why then are people brought back and not just allowed to die? Would you need the scythes if certain illnesses had no revival orders on them? Not to mention, that it introduces the first real fallacy in this whole world. If there is no pressing need to control the population because the Thunderhead can solve every eventuality. Is the fact that you invented this gleaming process, to begin with a sign of sociopathy?
Space travel*:
In this world space travel is obsolete. The reason is that it was too dangerous and too many people died.
Space travel has never really been for the people. From its inception, it has been a war of wills and a war of ego between powerful men and the nations they wear on their sleeves. And frankly, that hasn’t changed today.
However, there is a significant portion of the population that would prefer the money to be spent on almost anything else. They don’t care for billionaires or their toys. Their voices are often silenced as jealousy and they are written off as unable to see the impact of humanity beyond the stars. So, I’m finding it hard to believe a world would exist where producers of rockets that are badges of honor before their transportation for humanity would allow that same humanity to tell them not to do it because of a few deaths. But this is something that seems implausible to me.
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Book Review At A Glance:
Recommendation: 5 out of 5
Book Cover Appeal:
🍓🍓🍓
Story & Narration:
🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓
Romance:
It was too light to judge, but what there was, I liked.
Character/(s) Personality:
🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓
