Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - The Toll

I adore this series. This book rounded things off enough to feel satisfying, yet left me wanting more. I could have kept reading this book way past it’s ending.

I think Shusterman has created something genuinely brilliant, with characters you really root for, a plot that keeps you engaging and magnificent, thoughtful world building.

I honestly absolutely LOVED my time with these books and the audio narration my Tremblay was fantastic throughout!

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unicornofthesea's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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marareading's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I enjoyed this third book more than book two. The twists were more intense. I am not sure how I feel about the ending yet. The plot of this particular book is so random, I. Not sure if I love it or not. It is definitely going to sit with me, and on that basis alone it gets high marks. It is original, and very well thought out.

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medini_l's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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rangerwing75's review against another edition

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I don’t know what went wrong between Thunderhead and this but something must have because this could not have been more of a drag.

I genuinely tried to enjoy this book. It was fun at first, but it quickly grew tiresome. It’s a long book - longer than it needs to be with all of its paragraphs and chapters focusing on unimportant characters. We didn’t need an entire chapter dedicated to the woes of a random painter we never see again. I’d put the book down and almost dread picking it back up.

It’s long, it’s slow, and the story isn’t engaging enough to make me not care about those things. This isn’t like in Journey to the West where at least the story is funny even if the chapters are packed with poetry. A disappointing end to what was looking to be an amazing trilogy.

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emilysreadingbooks's review

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adventurous tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

**includes spoilers for the first two books in the series**

Endura has sunk, Citra and Rowan are assumed dead, Scythe Goddard has set himself up to wield unlimited power, and the Thunderhead has gone silent for everyone except Greyson Tolliver. With Goddard’s biggest opponents dead, and the Thunderhead unable to interfere in scythe business, is there anything that can stop him?

The writing style in this book is unique, but made the book much more interesting to read. There are a variety of plots and subplots in this novel, but they are all woven together to push the main plot foreword. While this is a long book, there isn’t a moment of lull in the action; everything Shusterman wrote has a purpose to the plot.

The limited amount of romance in this entire series was refreshing. I love romance, but it is often included with no real benefit to the plot. I was actually surprised that this book includes the romance, considering that the first two books in the trilogy contained essentially none, but in this book it added to the plot, and created a bigger emotional response.

The ending is teetering on the edge of being either brilliant, or literally dues ex machina. But I’m not mad about it? The more I think about it and the more time it’s been since I finished, the more I think this book is brilliant. Very few authors could successfully write a plot twist like this, but Neal Shusterman pulls it off beautifully.

Overall, I gave this book 4 stars. It was a well-written, interesting novel, but I found the plot twists at the end to be a big leap, even though it was pulled off.

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kshertz's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

What can I say without giving away any spoilers?. This is the very last book in the series in the arc of a scythe. I definitely hope that there’s going to be another book because I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the ending however a lot of questions were answered and as always I was hooked and cannot put the book down. I think anyone who picks up this series would really enjoy it. It’s supposed to be a utopia which eventually becomes a dystopia and I think it has so much relevance to today in our society. It’s a YA book that I feel like I’m going to be recommending a lot to everyone I know.

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abeeg05's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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