Book Review: Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Author:  Neal Shusterman
Title: Scythe
(Arc of a Scythe #1)
Genre: YA, SciFi, Fantasy
Pages: 435
Published: November 22nd 2016 
Where I Got It: Borrowed from Library

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.


I went into this with such a heated excitement! What a cool and interesting concept! What a weird world! But alas....you cannot win them all. 

So the book follows Citra and Rowan who were chosen to apprentice to a scythe. What is a scythe? A scythe is a group of people who are in charge of keeping the population at bay since everyone can live forever now. Science has rid of all disease and has kept death away. Oh! And you can also go through a procedure to stay looking young. So to keep things under control the Scythe are allowed to pick whoever they want to "glean" *cough* murder *cough*. 

A cool concept and a very real possibility with how our society is going. We already have rid of so many diseases. It is scary to think we may find immortality. *shudders* Death is scary and unknown, but I do not want to live forever. Nope, nope, nope. So it does make sense to have a group dedicated to keeping everything at bay. Don't want to kill the planet or starve the people. 

Now...my first issue is the lack of control of this group of people. They are not funded by the government from what I can see. There are no real roles on who gets selected to "Glean". It is chaos. It is just as bad as if death was still running amuck. You never know who is going to be picked to be killed. Soooo is it really ANY better than just letting nature do its thing? Mhmmm. 

I enjoyed the beginning, but when I started hitting the plot holes and questionable things...I lost interest. I wanted to see what would happen, so I continued on this journey. By the time I closed the book...I had zero interest in any of the characters. I still liked Rowan, but I really didn't care anymore. I just wanted a conclusion and be done with it. 

Yes, I did have hope things would turn around...but nope. Sad. 

In the end, this had the formula for an amazing story, but I was left disinterested and sad. Maybe this wasn't for me. Maybe I overthink and look for plotholes. I question a lot of things, so maybe it wasn't for made for me. It is YA, so possibly. I am getting cynical in my old age. haha. So yes, no. Not for me. I'll give it 2 stars though. Rowan was neat and I liked the concept.