Citra and Rowan live in a world of our future. The Cloud as we know it has become The Thunderhead – an all knowing, all seeing, all understanding ‘being’ that oversees humankind.

All disease, religion, hunger and misery is gone. Even pain has been all but banished as everyone has nanites in their blood to counter it, also able to heal a body quickly.

But dire overpopulation is the result, needing constant culling. The Thunderhead has not been given this job – this is the responsibility of The Scythes. Scythes are those chosen to be apprenticed for a year. To learn all ways possible to take a life at their discretion under their personal yearly quota. A myriad of weapons, poisons, and fight knowledge is part of the training. A Scythe doesn’t kill – they Glean.

When Citra and Rowan are chosen together by a Scythe, they neither know each other or want to glean anyone, but that is why they are perfect candidates for their apprenticeships. But just as there was before the age of The Thunderhead and The Scythe, power, corruption and ego has spawned again, and Citra and Rowan are engulfed by it.

Will they be able to keep true to themselves, and to each other, even when given the order to glean the ones closest to them?

A brilliant premise, with twists and turns, alliances and power plays under the surface wherever the two main characters tread.

Told in different viewpoints and interspersed with diary entries from Scythes throughout history to the present day, the tension builds slowly until I wanted to jump inside this world and deal out the justice I felt strongly compelled to reap.

This is followed by the 2nd in this series Thunderhead and Toll is the finale in this trilogy.

Author – Neil Shusterman

Age – 13+

Read a review of the next book in the series (Click on a cover)

(Death, Kill, Deadishness, Future, Utopia, Grim Reapers, Intrigue, Control, Power, Conclave, Apprenticeship, Allies, Series, Revenge, Secret)