Scythe

by Neal Shusterman ★★★★★

There is no shortage of compelling Young Adult (YA) dystopian content out there, whether it's The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent, or dozens more. It seems like we would have saturated that space by now, but new series keep getting written, and most of them end up being pretty good. Well, add another to the success pile: Scythe (Book 1 of the Arc of a Scythe series) isn't just good; it's excellent.

The book's premise is that humanity has reached a sort of stasis on earth, two hundred-ish years into the future. AI has attained general intelligence, coalesced into an omniscient presence known as "the Thunderhead". Rather than taking over the planet and destroying humanity à la Skynet/Terminator, it's been elevated to a position of benevolent oversight when humans realized that the Thunderhead is far superior to humanity when it comes to making decisions and creating an ideal society. Disease has been eliminated, and people can be regenerated no matter how gruesome their death (with the exception of fire). There are some strata to society, but there is no poverty and everyone is able to live a comfortable life.

Despite the advanced nature of the Thunderhead, off-planet exploration and colonization has gone poorly. Be it the Moon or Mars, previous expeditions have curiously been utter failures, and so humanity has embraced their place on Earth. There's one problem: there are finite resources on Earth, and with humanity (via the Thunderhead) conquering death, something needs to be done to control overpopulation and overconsumption of resources. Thus, the Scythe program was born.

Once it was realized that population levels needed to be kept somewhat steady, a small collection of humans were selected to devote their lives to the unpleasant task of killing off (they refer to it as "gleaning") a percentage of the human population each year. Dubbed "Scythes", they are given an annual quota—around 260 people—that they must kill over the course of the year. "The ending of human life used to be in the hands of nature. But we stole it. Now we have a monopoly on death," writes one of the Scythes. They live by a strict set of commandments, and while there are factions who approach the task of killing differently, they are aligned as a group behind that purpose.

Scythes are forbidden from killing each other, but they're not forbidden from killing themselves, and inevitably the stress of taking lives day after day takes its toll. As such, new Scythes must be found and trained each year, and this is where our story begins. Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch are teenagers; Citra from a small, loving family, and Rowan from a large family who barely clocks his presence. For different reasons, they are both selected to apprentice under Scythe Faraday, one of the longest-tenured and most respected Scythes in the Scythedom. The novel focuses on their training under his tutelage: they'll learn for a year, and then Scythe Faraday will select one of them to move forward.

Citra and Rowan are in competition; they're also isolated, and in the midst of a high-stress scenario played out over several months. As Rowan says, "They were not exactly friends—they were never given the opportunity to develop a friendship before being thrust into apprenticeship together. They were partners; they were adversaries—and Rowan found it increasingly hard to parse his feelings about her. All he knew was that he liked watching her write." They're forbidden from any sort of romantic involvement with each other, but they're teenagers, and teenagers love breaking the rules.

The macro-level premise is compelling, but what sets Scythe apart from others in the YA space is an unpredictable plot combined with a pressing undercurrent of moral ambiguity. There are significant twists that happen throughout the novel, resetting the story in unexpected ways just as the reader gets comfortable that they think they know where things are going. There's also plenty of commentary on what life in such a society might be like, as well as the omnipresent moral dilemma of how to approach doing the worst possible thing—taking a life—even when you believe it is for the greater good. The book is smarter than it needs to be, and the interesting philosophical questions generated by the premise pair well with a plot that careens at full speed for much of the book.

Upon finishing Scythe, I immediately put both Book 2 and Book 3 on hold, and I'm looking forward to where Shusterman takes the story from here. Scythe is excellent on its own, and it sets the bar high for the remainder of the series, one that I'm optimistic will rank near the top of a crowded YA genre.