Review: Shusterman, N. (2017). Scythe.
LSSL 5385: Printz or Printz Honor Books
Shusterman, N. (2017). Scythe. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster BFYR.
This first installment in the Arc of a Scythe series is a Printz Honor recipient and a 2018-19 Texas Lonestar recommended novel. Set in an undetermined dystopian future, it explores the question of how society would function if death were defeated and human beings could live infinitely. In signature Shusterman style, the story addresses the logistics of how people would approach and legislate population controls, as well as how moral and ethical standards would be altered by what is such a highly-sought after change.
In a world where there is no disease and fatal accidents are immediately rectified, even suicide is not an option. Thus, society has employed the use of highly-regarded professionals called scythes, who are intended to be above reproach and to take their sacred duty of culling the population very seriously. They are outside the reach of other laws, as well as separated from any involvement with the Thunderhead, the all-knowing artificial intelligence who has evolved from the former “cloud” and become self aware, tasking itself with the unbiased and benign care of human beings.
Through two separate and chance encounters, teens Rowan and Citra make an impression upon, and are selected for apprenticeship, by the Honorable Scythe Faraday. Though neither desires such an education, they leave their families to begin their year-long training--and a new friendship--only to find themselves unwittingly pitted against each other as mortal competitors by bitter individuals among the schythedom’s leadership. Again in characteristic Shusterman tone, the futuristic society is careful to choose vocabulary that is considered non-threatening--people are not “killed,” but rather, “gleaned”--and inevitably, human fallibility invades the foundation of best-laid plans, creating malignant cracks.
Throughout the year-long first novel told through third person, the reader learns of historical facts through entries from various scythes’ “gleaning journals,” as well as laws, hierarchies, and inner-workings of the overarching A.I. involving a mentally-held conversation with the Thunderhead. As the action rises and the reader questions how Rowan and Citra can possibly avoid one having to glean the other, it becomes apparent that there is far more at stake than just their own personal survival, friendship, and possible romance. Society as they know it is under attack, and they, along with their few true friends and mentors, face a seemingly insurmountable task in defeating the corrupted powers that are only interested in their own self-advancement and pleasures.
This is a fast-paced story full of unexpected turns, and does an excellent job of having the reader suspend disbelief and accept a backdrop in which killing is a necessitated “honor,” all the while rooting on the hero and heroine. Young adult readers will not only be invested in the protagonists’ fates, reading on in the second installment, but also challenged to consider what really makes us human, and how we personally would respond to similar ethical dilemmas--both possibly, and presently.
Book 2
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