Scythe

Neil Schusterman is an author I have some experience with, as I read his book Dry a few years ago, and loved it. Then, I found that Scythe was available at my local library, so I grabbed it to see what the fuss was about. The premise interested me, and I was excited to see what Schusterman would do with it. Yet, after reading this book, I am sorry to say that the premise is all this first installment has going for it.

This story begins with a world without death. Dying from things like accidents, medical issues, and even old age has been abolished through scientific advancements. This, however, leaves a problem: people keep having children and the world cannot sustain their population. Enter the Scythes. These are the people whose only purpose is to kill, called gleaning, so that the population can be kept under control.

We follow two characters: Cytra and Rowan. Cytra is a normal teenage girl who likes to excel at school. Rowan is a teenage boy who often finds himself forgotten amongst his large family. Through various ways, each manages to impress a Scythe called Faraday, who then takes them both on as apprentices. It is, however, unprecedented for a Scythe to have two simultaneous apprentices, so the Scythe Council issues an ultimatum: at the end of their training, one scythe will become a full member, while the other must return home in shame. Soon, however, even this is not enough, and Cythra and Rowan will find themselves surrounded on all sides with enemies, and few friends as they fight not just for their future careers, but their very lives.

Firstly, let's start with the good. Schustermen has a very good writing style. Something along the lines of John Green, it is toned down but no less poignant in the debate of how Scythes glean different people. His language allows the reader to see them, at first as death incarnate, then, as he peels back the layers, see them as what they are: humans asked to do an impossible task. The writing gives us that humanity when called for, which is well done.

I also like the premise, as someone who had recently lost a loved one, the idea of simply bringing them back to life is an interesting one. Add to that the idea that they can also return to a younger age, and I was curious about how this would shape our modern reality. Schusterman uses this premise for all it is worth, showing us how these people interpret death, in all its forms. On the one hand, you have Scythe Faraday, who sits down with the person or persons to be gleaned and calmly walks them through it as though it were a ritual. The justification here being that these people deserve compassion for the deed they have to go through. A different take on death comes in the form of Scythe Curie, who simply chooses people at random to be gleaned. Her justification is that death was instantaneous, and seemingly random, therefore she must be as well. Then, she invites the family of the gleaned person to her home in something reminiscent of a Viewing, where that person's life is recounted and they remember the good times of that gleaned person. Finally, you have the viewpoints of other Scythe's who abuse their power. Using everything from rifles and flamethrowers to perform their gleaning of whole crowds of people and reaping the benefits of it. All of these different viewpoints of the scythes are clever metaphors for death, from accepting the inevitable, to the random, to the murderous, each form of death is cleverly shown here.

Sadly, that is all I have for the positive, because while this has a good premise, the execution (no pun intended) is lacking.

Firstly, there is the main crux of the fight between Citra and Rowan. At first it starts out simple enough: they will both train to become a Scythe under Faraday, and at the end of their training, one will be selected to become a full blown Scythe, the other will not. The one that is not will go back to their daily normal life. But then a wrench is thrown into the plan: At a national meeting of all the Scythe's, it is decided that the loser will have to now be gleaned by the winner. My question is, why? Schusterman does not give a solid enough framework for why this is to be done. It is hinted that this is part of the main plot for the villain, but other than throwing a wrench into the plans of our main characters because evil, I see no other reason why this is done.

Then there are the characters themselves. Much like Dry, I tend to remember the people they represent more than the actual people they are. This goes for our main characters. Citra is your typical book nerd who likes to study, and... that's it. Rowan is not much better. Schusterman describes him as the lettuce in the BLT. He is squished and forgotten in the sandwich, and, on his own, tends to be forgotten by his family. The same is true for me as I was reading from his perspective. We do see them change by the end of the book, as Rowan learns how to kill ruthlessly with a variety of weapons, and Cytra learns more about the philosophical side of killing random people. Both are ones that I found interesting, but that leads to unsatisfying conclusions for Rowan inparticular. It turns out that he is exceptional with weapons and killing people, at one point he is able to dispatch multiple Scythes (you know, the people whose job it is to fight and kill) who are years older than him because of course he can. This makes for an unbelievable change in Rowan that takes me out of the story.

This leads into the romance of the book, because of course there is a romance. These two characters seem to fall in love not out of the strength of their own characters, but because it is a YA book, and they are the two best looking main characters, so they have to. As you can imagine, for characters that are boring on their own, they do not add much when they are together (ironic since they spend so few scenes together in this book to begin with). All this means that this is perhaps the most useless and unnecessary romance in a book I have read in a long time.

All this adds up for me to say that I enjoyed about a total of 50% of this book. There are other plot lines that happen here (that I won't spoil) but I will only say that the plot that seemed to be so tightly wound within the premise tends to unravel by about the half way mark, making for some head scratching moments, where I was surprised to the point of confusion. This means that overall, I'll give this book a two out of five. If you think you might like this book, then pick it up, but do so with the warning that the premise alone may not save your reading experience.