Scythe

Just finished this book, and while it wasn't exactly what I expected, it was certainly worth reading and I look forward to the sequel. I wish this site allowed half-stars. I'd bump my rating to 4.5 if I could.

SCYTHE is the closest thing to a Utopian novel I have ever read, but given that Utopia is unobtainable, the dystopia lurking beneath the perfect façade was fascinating.

SCYTHE takes place in a future where humanity has conquered everything–even death. People live for hundreds of years, getting gene therapy to take themselves back to their twenties when they get too old. If they die accidentally, a drone takes them to a revival center where they heal after a few days. (Bored teenagers hurl themselves off of buildings for fun–they call it “splatting.”) Nanites in the blood make sure a person can never be depressed or hurt. Break a leg–opiates in your bloodstream kill the pain and in the morning, your leg is good as new.

Humanity has also given themselves over to a massive AI system called the Thunderhead that keeps the Utopia progressing. It controls everything...except the Scythes.

The Scythes are agents of death. Long ago, the Thunderhead realized that permanent deaths would be necessary to maintain the Utopia on Earth, so the Scythes were created to cull (they don't “kill”–they call it “gleaning”) humanity when necessary. The Scythes are above the law, but not above petty squabbles and political maneuvering. They are, after all, only human.

Two teenagers, Rowan and Citra, are chosen to apprentice into the Scythehood and learn their ways. After their training, one of them will be a scythe, and the other will be gleaned.

All in all this was a fascinating book. The two main characters bordered on cliché at times, but given that it's a YA dystopian novel, they're allowed to. In fact, that's part of the point–the future provided so well that everyone is sort of the same and sort of boring.

The book's strength is that it raises some fascinating questions about mortality, about what it means to actually live, and it shows that even in a perfect system, there will always be utter douchebags who power-grab because people are fallible and petty.

I recommend.