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A review by aldoregan
Scythe by Neal Shusterman
4.0
My greatest wish for humanity is not for peace or comfort or joy. It is that we all still die a little inside every time we witness the death of another. For only the pain of empathy will keep us human. There’s no version of God that can help us if we ever lose that.
Scythe is set in a utopian world. All social and economical problems and issues - like hunger, poverty, suffering, even death- have been conquered. The world has come to a perfection. Humans are now immortal, everyone is treated fairly, and the needs of the people are acknowledged and provided. However, in order to keep the stability of the population, a group of people called scythes are tasked to glean (kill) a certain amount of people per year. In this perfect world, scythes have become the face of death. The story follows two teenagers, Citra and Rowan, who become apprentices of a scythe. The problem is, neither of them wants to become a scythe.
I think all young women are cursed with a streak of unrelenting foolishness, and all young men are cursed with a streak of absolute stupidity.
There was a time in my life that I liked to call my “dystopian phase”. Each book I bought, each book I read, each book I talked about were all set in a dystopian world. It was fun while it lasted, eventually I grew tired of reading only dystopian books. It’s been quite awhile since the last time I read one, to be completely honest. But what sets Shusterman’s dystopian world apart from the other dystopian books that I’ve read is that it is very thought provoking. In a way, Scythe is a philosophical book disguised as YA fiction. Scythe is not only a story about what it is like to live in a utopian world, it subtly discusses what life and death truly mean. Moreover, it also presents how meaningful it is to be human and being alive and living. It also plays with morality in a very well done way. I went into this book not really giving it much thought, but when I finished it, I was left pondering. I thought about a lot of things, but most especially, I thought about living and how meaningful it is. It made me appreciate living a lot more than I could ever think of.
Human nature is both predictable and mysterious; prone to great and sudden advances, yet still mired in despicable self-interest.
As for the story, it was very gripping and fascinating. It was fast-paced and straight to the point, but not at all confusing. In fact, how the story unfolds is done excellently and there’s always something going on. The downside, however, is that because of the third person POV (or omniscient POV), I found it difficult to connect with the main characters. I felt like I didn’t truly know who they were, or it felt like I only knew a part of them but not all parts of them. Although, they were still very interesting characters to read about.
Innocence is doomed to die a senseless death at our own hands, a casualty of the mistakes we can never undo. So we lay to rest the wide-eyed wonder we once thrived upon, replacing it with the scars of which we never speak, too knotted for any amount of technology to repair.
I didn’t really have high expectations for this book, but I ended up pleasantly surprised. Reading this book is a paradox. It is both terrifying and lovely to read about because of how insightful and thought provoking it is. I can’t wait for the second book AAAAHHH.
Without the threat of suffering, we can’t experience true joy. The best we get is pleasantness.
Scythe is set in a utopian world. All social and economical problems and issues - like hunger, poverty, suffering, even death- have been conquered. The world has come to a perfection. Humans are now immortal, everyone is treated fairly, and the needs of the people are acknowledged and provided. However, in order to keep the stability of the population, a group of people called scythes are tasked to glean (kill) a certain amount of people per year. In this perfect world, scythes have become the face of death. The story follows two teenagers, Citra and Rowan, who become apprentices of a scythe. The problem is, neither of them wants to become a scythe.
I think all young women are cursed with a streak of unrelenting foolishness, and all young men are cursed with a streak of absolute stupidity.
There was a time in my life that I liked to call my “dystopian phase”. Each book I bought, each book I read, each book I talked about were all set in a dystopian world. It was fun while it lasted, eventually I grew tired of reading only dystopian books. It’s been quite awhile since the last time I read one, to be completely honest. But what sets Shusterman’s dystopian world apart from the other dystopian books that I’ve read is that it is very thought provoking. In a way, Scythe is a philosophical book disguised as YA fiction. Scythe is not only a story about what it is like to live in a utopian world, it subtly discusses what life and death truly mean. Moreover, it also presents how meaningful it is to be human and being alive and living. It also plays with morality in a very well done way. I went into this book not really giving it much thought, but when I finished it, I was left pondering. I thought about a lot of things, but most especially, I thought about living and how meaningful it is. It made me appreciate living a lot more than I could ever think of.
Human nature is both predictable and mysterious; prone to great and sudden advances, yet still mired in despicable self-interest.
As for the story, it was very gripping and fascinating. It was fast-paced and straight to the point, but not at all confusing. In fact, how the story unfolds is done excellently and there’s always something going on. The downside, however, is that because of the third person POV (or omniscient POV), I found it difficult to connect with the main characters. I felt like I didn’t truly know who they were, or it felt like I only knew a part of them but not all parts of them. Although, they were still very interesting characters to read about.
Innocence is doomed to die a senseless death at our own hands, a casualty of the mistakes we can never undo. So we lay to rest the wide-eyed wonder we once thrived upon, replacing it with the scars of which we never speak, too knotted for any amount of technology to repair.
I didn’t really have high expectations for this book, but I ended up pleasantly surprised. Reading this book is a paradox. It is both terrifying and lovely to read about because of how insightful and thought provoking it is. I can’t wait for the second book AAAAHHH.
Without the threat of suffering, we can’t experience true joy. The best we get is pleasantness.