Monday, December 10, 2018

99. Scythe by Neil Shusterman

#1 Arc of a Scythe
read on my iPhone
2016 Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
435 pgs.
YA Dystopia
Finished 12/10/2018
Goodreads rating: 4.36 - 55,325 ratings
My rating:  4.5

First line/s:  "We must, by law, keep a record of the innocents we kill."

My comments:  How can you give a five rating to a book that is all about killing  A story that gives you the heebie-jeebies?  A tale that is unremitting in its darkness?  I don't think I can...quite. It's a clever story, and I couldn't wait to get back to it if I had to put it down, but it was....horrible, in its way.  A perfect world, like the world of The Giver, showing off huge chinks in the perfectness.  It makes me shudder.  Shusterman is quite a masterful writer.

Goodreads synopsis:  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.

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