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[katara]

Title: Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)
Author: Neal Shusterman
Format: Epub
Rating: 3.95/5
Status: Finished
Reading Date: February 24, 2018 to February 26, 2018
Book Summary: 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.
Book Review: In Scythe, we find that humanity has figured a way to avoid death all together. In fact, people even have the ability to generate into various ages they wish. Some have even gone as far as to try to hurt themselves by falling off buildings and such just to be taken to a place where they can heal due to the nanites (?) in their blood.

But this also comes with a price. Humanity has become overpopulated and thus a society of Scythes have been created to lessen the burden upon the planet. This means Scythes must weave out people and carry out their deaths. Of course, not everyone who is chosen goes quietly. There are some that tend to try to find ways around it and that can be a problem because their family is often punished because of it. Those that go quietly without a fight, their family wins immunity for a year.

For Citra and Rowan, they are chosen to become apprentices to the Scythe Faraday. Of course, neither of them are willing to do it. That is until they learn they really have no choice. Even worse, they find that being two apprentices of a Scythe also comes with a price especially when the Conclave decides that when either one becomes the Scythe, then they must kill the other one. Now the two must compete against each other despite the fact their feelings for each other are growing.


I have to admit this book's premise was interesting. A world filled with people given the task of balancing humanity's population while allowing them to enjoy the ability to regenerate to any age they wish or survive a really bad fall. Unfortunately those that are chosen are given various different deaths and some can be extremely gruesome. I felt bad for some of the families whose loved ones fought against being given death because those suffer as well. I found that a bit unfair because I don't understand why others must suffer when the chosen ones are being idiots.

I would have given this book a bit higher rating but the story rolled out at a snail's pace. There were some things that were so boring that I had to put the book down to go do something before I fell asleep. The villian seemed one-dimensional and romance between Citra and Rowan fell a bit flat. I am grateful that the romance was not heavy in this book but there seemed to be no chemistry between the two of them. Maybe there will be something better between them? I suppose I will have to wait until I crack open book two.

Overall this was interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for something in ya that has little romance to it. Unfortunately the action is slow and you may find yourself putting down the book from time to time to do something or pick up another book.