This is the December Barnes & Noble YA Bookclub book for December and my son likes to do the bookclub. Also OwlCrate had a special edition of the last book in the trilogy, The Toll so I decided to get that and read this before passing it on to my son. So many of the teens and adults I talk to while at work who read and love YA loved this so I had been meaning to read it for some time and the two things I mentioned just pushed me to read it. And I was hooked from the first page. So much so that when I finished it this evening I ran out in my PJs to get book 2!!!
In this version of the world The Cloud has become The Thunderhead. The Thunderhead has replaced governments and in a way god. There is no famine, disease, or war. There isn't even pain, there is something in all people that heals and stops pain. And everyone is pretty much immortal. That is unless Scythe has chosen someone for gleaning. A Scythe can also grant someone immunity from death. When someone dies by other means they actually are only something called deadish. They are healed and sent back on their merry way in a few days.
In this world two teens, Citra and Rowan, are both chosen to be Scythe apprentices to Scythe Faraday. This is highly unusual and it sets off a chain of events that change both of them in ways they could never have imagined.
The questions this kind of world raises are both interesting and disturbing. After all aren't all people, no matter how long they live and what kind of world they live in, aren't they still just people with all the flaws and complexities that makes us human? So if death is in the hands of a few, for the purpose of keeping the population under control to some extent, and these people answer to know one outside of the group of them, and they have the discretion to choose their gleaning targets, isn't there a risk of bad apples spoiling the bunch?
It is really something, when you stop to think of it...as much as their rules, basically a version of then commandments, forbid choosing using any kind of bias or malice, and to always be compassionate, aren't people still just human and so possibly corrupt or corruptible? It is a lot of power to have, the power to end life in a world where there is no natural causes of death....
It is enough to scare the heck out of you if you think to hard on it...and what would you do with that kind of power?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Doesn't it?
(Finished Oct. 30, 2019)
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