Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Mild spoilers ahead! 

My Rating: 4.75 stars

This book was absolutely amazing! I honestly don't have any other words to describe it. To start, the worldbuilding really fascinated me. The concept of having a world that has conquered death, only to have to specifically kill people through ordained Scythes was super interesting for me to ponder on, both morally and philosophically. Those short extracts from the Scythe's journals which always preceeded chapters often really gave me pause and gave me as a reader deeper insight into both the depth of the backstory of the world, as well as the minds of the Scythes and exactly how they dealt with the morality of their jobs. 

What particularly intriuged me as I was reading this book was really thinking about the morality of what the Scythes were doing. In a way, they are killing innocent humans who objectively do not "deserve" to die. However, it also isn't objectively immoral, since humans are immoral in their world and so something is needed to mimic natural death. There are honorable and dishonorable ways that Scythes glean people and moral and immoral ways, even though from the reader's perspective any kind of gleaning in our world would be considered immoral, as it would constitute murder. I hope that this kind of philosophy will be further explored in the upcoming books. 

Both Citra and Rowan were also two incredibly individual characters and I found myself greatly enjoying both of their POVs and stories. I think I did slightly find myself empathizing more with Rowan and his backstory, but generally I could not have picked which of the two I would have wanted to get the apprenticeship. I can't say that I really shipped them together, as I didn't personally see much chemistry between the two of them. But I'm hoping that in Thunderhead, I might be able to see more of that. 

The story itself was also really intriguing and did really pull at my heartstrings at the end. I wonder how it will now continue, as both Citra and Rowan's situations have now completely changed. Genuinely can't wait to read on!