Scythe

This review will be about Scythe by Neal Shusterman. Published on November 22, 2016, on Goodreads it’s listed as a Young Adult, Dystopian, Fantasy, Romance, and Science Fiction. There are 3.5 books in the series, Scythe being the first in the Arc of a Scythe series. 

A little about the book:

Thou shalt kill.

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.

Review: 

All I can say is, wow.. I was not expecting a lot of what happened in this book. I was constantly thrown for a loop, in a good way, while reading this book and I have to say, I think this book is going in my top 10. I could not stop reading this book and when I would have to put it down, I got annoyed that I couldn’t keep reading, it's that good. 

It’s pretty gorey and there’s a lot of death, but the story is what draws me in. Especially the two main characters Citra and Rowan. Complete opposites of each other but they both have a type of personality that you can’t help but feel sympathy and connected to them in a way. 

Before I was even finished reading this, I ordered the second book because I didn’t want to wait a long time to read the next one. I might do a review on the second, let me know what you think! 

The character development was phenomenal. For Citra, her character development was HUGE. The way she’s portrayed in the beginning of the book is completely different after she’s a Scythe apprentice. Which is understandable because she had to go through tough training to become a full Scythe. But through all of the trials she had to go through, it made her more resilient and in my eyes, BadAss. 

For Rowan’s character development, Oh boy. It was just as good, if not more so as he had to endure a lot more than Citra. I was honestly thinking that he’s going to turn out to be bad, and there are some scenes that solidified that thought for me. But then the author threw in some thoughts for Rowan that made me pause and say, “Okay, maybe he’s not going to be a bad guy. Maybe just morally gray.” 

There’s not a whole lot of fight scenes, the only times there seems to be is when the Scythe students are training together or (Spoiler: when Citra is on the run or when Rowan fights back his Scythe Master) but honestly? I’m okay with that. 

There’s not really any romance, Rowan and Citra start to have feelings for each other but they never act on them or tell each other. Normally, I read books that have a bit of romance but this was a nice change of pace that I didn’t know I needed. 

There is a lot of death. I have to point that out as this is a book where humans CANNOT die. Disease? Can’t die from it. Get run over from a vehicle? You die but then you get brought back to life. The only way to really die is to be killed by a Scythe. Scythe’s jobs are to control the population since no one can die. It gets morbid, trust me. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that this is still a wonderfully put together book. 

If I could, I would rate this 10 stars but my scale only goes to 5 so, 5 out of 5 stars! I immensely enjoyed this book, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series! Who knows, I might do a review for the others.