It is some far distant year in the future. No one knows for sure when, because once death (along with pain, misery, disease, and old age) was conquered, there seemed little point in counting. However, a simple truth remains: to ease the tide of population growth, people still have to die. The Scythedom was created to deal with this responsibility.
Citra and Rowan have been chosen by Scythe Faraday to be his apprentices. They will both train for a year, although only one will be ordained as a Scythe. Neither wants to kill (now referred to as gleaning), but it seems they have little choice. In fact, Scythe Faraday considers their reluctance the very reason they will make good apprentices. He and other traditional scythes consider the taking of life to be a serious responsibility, a necessity for the good of society. However, a new school of thought is emerging, promoted by Scythe Goddard, whereby gleanings should be spectacular, en masse, and even enjoyable affairs. Citra and Rowan find themselves caught up in the politics of death and immortality in this novel full of twists, and turns, and the struggle for power in a world where most forms of power have been rendered obsolete.
Shusterman, National Book Award winner for Challenger Deep and the author of numerous well-spun tales, unravels his complex world via narrators Citra and Rowan as they learn the fine art of killing, and supplements it with passages from the mandatory gleaning journals of Scythe’s Curie, Faraday, Goddard, and others. Ethical questions abound!
Have you read Printz Honor book SCYTHE? What do you think?
--Lynn
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