Review: Arc of A Scythe Trilogy
- Alekhya S.
- Oct 4, 2020
- 7 min read
When I decided to read this, it was just because it was long overdue and I never expected to love it as much as I did. Its reputation is something of a "middle-grade book" like Divergent or The Grisha Trilogy. While I like both of those series, they are nowhere near my favorites, and that's where I thought Scythe was going to be as well. But I was completely wrong. The entire Arc of A Scythe trilogy surprised me so much and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Definitely in my Top 5.
This is gonna be pretty long, by the way, because I have a lot to say, but I'll split it into sections so if you're looking for the review of a specific book in the trilogy, just scroll down and it'll be easy to find. :)) Also, this is going to be spoilery so please don't read if you don't want to be spoiled. I won't be spoiling anything major, though.
Concept:
Firstly, I just want to talk about the concept. Scythe is set in a post-mortal world where everyone is immortal. If they get too old, they can "turn a corner" and set their age back down to a more preferred one. Because of this, there is overpopulation, and that's where scythes come in. Scythes are the only ones that can kill other people, and only for the sake of keeping the population level. They must be honorable, and they can't take pleasure in their job. If they take pleasure in it, then they like killing, which is not good because it will lead to corruption. If you're wondering why people can't die by themselves, it's because only fire and acid can kill a person in this world, since they can be revived any other way. When scythes kill, or "glean," people are not allowed to be revived.
There is also something called the Thunderhead, which is an AI with a consciousness. Because of the Thunderhead, no human advancements can be made, because the Thunderhead has made all of them. So essentially, anything that you want to do in the world is useless unless you're a scythe. There is also no racial prejudice, no homophobia, and basically, everything that we hate about the world right now is gone. It is also very boring because as I mentioned before, there is practically nothing of purpose to do in this world. The Thunderhead cannot interfere in anything to do with scythes, which means that the scythedom can be easily corrupted since the Thunderhead cannot put it back on the right track as it does with other people. This is kind of where Scythe picks up. Citra and Rowan, two teens that despise scythes and would never want to be one, are picked for apprenticeship by a scythe, and they must compete to become one. Whoever loses must kill the other. But as you can guess, Citra and Rowan form a bond, and they will do anything to keep each other alive.
Scythe:
This first book was captivating from the first page. I finished this in like two days on ebook, and I hate reading on ebook, which should just show you how good it was. It is set in a utopian society, and the concept (refer to the two huge paragraphs above this) is really cool. It is amazingly well thought out and literally every aspect you can think of is included. I was surprised at the absolutely amazing worldbuilding as well. It's the same regions that our current world has, but with a little twist on it. Like North America is NorthMerica and some places are grouped together, like FracoIberia. The whole thing is so unique and I have truly never read anything like this. The plot of this one was fairly simple, and it was an easy read. The main characters, Citra and Rowan are great, and I really ship them so much. Citra is so fierce and she's an amazing person. It was sad that they had to be split up in the middle and apprentice with Scythes Curie and Goddard instead of Faraday, but it was really interesting to see how their separate lives played out. How Rowan was very conflicted after being exposed to Goddard and seeing how different his methods were from Scythe Faraday's, his original mentor. How Scythe Curie was amazing to Citra, just as Faraday was. Scythe Faraday is, for some reason, my favorite character out of all of them. I'm strangely attached to him. At this point, Rowan's life takes a turn for the worse, and Citra's doesn't. In the end, Rowan is an outcast, and Citra is accepted, so they're separated, which hurt me. Citra stays a good person, as always, but Rowan changes a lot throughout the book, but in the end, still stays true to himself, though he becomes way more ruthless and cold. Rowan is probably the most complex character in this series. And his dedication to Citra made me love him so much. Speaking of the ending, MAJOR PLOT TWISTSSSS. I live for the plot twists throughout the whole series because I could never guess any of them and they're all mind-blowing.
Thunderhead:
This one is my favorite out of all three for a number of reasons. As you can tell by the title, this one is a lot about the Thunderhead, the AI with a consciousness. We get to see a lot of its thoughts, and it's really interesting. It brings up a lot of moral and philosophical questions about our world today. In this way, it's much more complex than the first book, but definitely not as complex as the last book, which makes it the perfect amount of complex for me. I feel that if you truly sit down and think about all the questions and ideas posed in this book, it will make the reading experience better and make you appreciate the book more, but of course, you don't have to. Reading the book just for the plot is just as enjoyable. We get to see the reason behind everything that the Thunderhead does, and we learn about more of the aspects of it than we knew before. For example. the "unsavories." That was a really cool concept to me. There are always people who want to rebel, to defy society. But in the world of Scythe, these people have no place. But the Thunderhead makes place. Bascially, the "unsavories" can rebel to their heart's desire without actually causing any harm, so everyone is satisfied. Another example is the Tonists. They are a religious group in a world with no religion because there is no need for God, since the Thunderhead can explain everything in the world and give you anything you could want. The Tonists worship "the tone" which is basically just a vibration, and the Thunderhead sees the need for people to want to worship as they did in the mortal days, so it lets the Tonists live in peace. So, overall, the concept of the Thunderhead is totally freaking awesome and unique and I'm obsessed. Also, this book has many perspectives; not just Citra and Rowan's like in the last book. It has Faraday and Munira's, Scythe Goddard's, Scythe Rand's, Citra and Marie's, Rowan's, and Greyson's. The last thing I'm going to mention is the AMAZING PLOT TWIST. It was even better than the ones in the last book, and I literally was about to throw my phone across the room, it was that good. And the ending as well. It was SO UNEXPECTED. It was extremely cool though. And also really really sad. You could literally feel the Thunderhead's anger at humanity. It set a great stage for the last book.
The Toll:
To be honest, I don't really like this one. It was good, and it had a great ending, but it went really slow. It was also pretty confusing. There are two timelines, and you'd expect them to happen parallelly, but I believe one is actually happening three years ahead of the other. And it just goes back and forth, so I was pretty confused for a while there. There are also weird time jumps? Like it goes super slow for a bit and then suddenly it's been a year. That was really off-putting. I honestly had to force myself through this book because of how slow it was. It didn't have the excitement or the plot twists that the other two have. I mean, I understand that it's the culmination of the last two books, and so everything is playing out slowly, but there was nothing super interesting going on. There were too many different perspectives, as well. While I liked that aspect in the last one, since there's more in this one, I don't like it. And I wish there was more of Citra and Rowan. Citra gets a fair amount, but Rowan gets almost nothing. And they're not even together until the end. I wanted their relationship to be more developed. I do love Faraday's and Citra's relationship, though. When Faraday ran to her on the atoll, my heart literally melted because she was the only one who could bring him out of his isolation and misery. This book was boring because of how much emphasis was placed on the Tonists and Greyson. I thought Greyson's perspective was boring in the last one, and since it is the main plot point here, it was just really boring for me. I feel like all of the things I didn't like as much in the other books were emphasized here, which is why this one rates lower than the rest in my eyes. The climax was pretty good, but also lacked that "throw my phone out the window" factor that the plot twists and endings of the other books have. Speaking of plot twists, there really wasn't any here which also contributes to my dislike of this book. So basically it was good, but not that good.
Overall, the Arc of a Scythe trilogy is an absolutely amazing series that will probably stay in my heart with some of my other favorite books. I love the concept, the world, the characters, the plot twists, and basically everything. Of course, there were some things I didn't like, specifically the last book, but that's alright because it was still great. I'm giving it a 4.5/5 star rating.
If I look back and think to the very first book, so much has changed and it's been a whole journey. I'm kind of attached to these characters. This will probably become one of my comfort books like Divergent or The Hunger Games. I tried to be as thorough as possible with this review, and I also tried to spoil the least amount that I could. If you actually read the whole thing, good job, because I don't actually expect anyone to. I just wanted to get my thoughts out there. But anyway, I'm done, and hopefully you enjoyed this!
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