A review by mrtvavrana
Nimbus by Neal Shusterman

tense slow-paced

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

1.0

 I have read this book in Slovak. 

 

 If you thought the first book was bad, you haven´t seen anything yet, I promise you that. The entire plot of this book was, simply put, ridiculous, and it made even less sense than the Scythe. 

 

Our characters do not experience any sort of growth throughout Thunderhead either. Citra acts like a god because she is so special. Thunderhead said so! And so did the author, so simply she must be. On the other hand, we experience Rowan turning into an even edgier, black-wearing, annoying manchild. 

 

My biggest issue concerning Citra was that she is somehow very influential and many Scythes look up to her. That itself would not be an issue, but she literally properly talks to and interacts with 2 people in total: Curie and Rowan. I have to admit, though, that her way of taking life made a small impression on me. I think she was quite fair, and so was Rowan, technically. I still do not approve of his actions. 

This book introduces us to some new characters and brings forth some characters we have already seen in the previous book. I was excited we would see more of Tyger, but I was horribly disappointed. His entire personality was changed to cover some holes in the plot caused by him

becoming a Scythe apprentice. I definitely did not like that he was only used to make Goddard´s resurrection more brutal and painful for Rowan. Because that whole subplot with Goddard coming back? It did not make sense. Rand was able to walk into an unregistered clinic and get the care she needed, so why didn´t she bring his head along? Surely, they would have been able to do something given his brain was okay. I mean, even if it wasn´t, they have the technology to revive a person even if their brains are turned into mush.

 

A new character, Greyson (Slayd), was introduced, and for a couple of minutes I felt hope. His storyline

as a spy for Thunderhead

seemed interesting; I was excited to see what he would accomplish. But I feel like it was poorly executed, and it nearly bored me to death.

It also kind of confirmed that Thunderhead is also evil and does not really care for people as much as we were led to believe.

With him, we are introduced to a group of people who fell out of Thunderhead´s favour—the unsavories. They are, simply put, criminals who did “something really bad,” and they now live without access to the Cloud. 

In my review of Scythe, I mentioned that I did not form any opinion about Thunderhead. We definitely saw more of him in this book, given it was named after him. I still think his part was much less significant than it should have been, and it, again, was not very well executed. My biggest issue with his existence lies, once again, in Scythes. As we learnt in the previous book, he chose them to carry out the killings because he did not want people to see him as a monster. But how, with all that knowledge and after seeing the whole of human history, could he choose people to do that? He surely must have known how easily corruptible they must be. 

The only somewhat interesting subplot was Faraday´s quest. Unfortunately, this did not get enough space. 

As I have already hinted, the plot was a disaster. But I think the ending takes the cake in this case. I am not going into the details, because I would not be able to talk about it spoiler-free, but the island of Endura and the events happening there have to be at least mentioned. This whole part of the book really solidified my negative opinion about Thunderhead. He simply decided to let humanity suffer because skeletons are untouchable. Because he himself made up a law a long time ago that they are not his problem.  

The book ends with a cliffhanger. A horrible and predictable one. It almost made my blood boil; honestly, this entire book is a joke. If you have read the first one and decided to continue, please save yourself. Do not read this mess. 

A few more words before I eject myself into the outer space: I think the three most ridiculous moments of this book, and perhaps even the whole trilogy, were Scythe Beyoncé, remotely controlled fish, and Texas. I also cannot mention that Shusterman decided to call the middle eastern region Israebian. What the hell, Neal? What the hell? Out of every single possible option, this was the worst one.