Secondly, how come this world lacks that real-world thing called background checks? Maybe some like that might be important when hiring someone to ARBITRARILY COMMIT MURDER. Of all the people to give the power to commit murder willy-nilly, teens aren’t the best choice. First off, the fact that TEENAGERS become apprentice Scythes is utter bullcrap. The way the world is put together comes off as Shusterman going out of his way to make it as corrupt as possible, so that it can’t be interpreted in any way other than “bad”.
However, Scythe doesn’t reach that potential, at least not from what I could GLEAN off of the dialogue and worldbuilding. Murder is a horrible act, and the idea of hired killers being able to arbitrarily murder whomever they want is inherently scary, but the world in Scythe could’ve been a genuinely good solution for mankind. Unfortunately, it’s not so much the case in execution. Scythe‘s premise could’ve asked a lot of questions about morality and the greater good. Two plucky teens named Citra and Rowan are recruited as apprentice Scythes, and go on adventures in life and death. However, the population is still a thing, so they hire people called Scythes to off folks, which results in what is called gleaning: the true, final death. But does it succeed?Īrc of a Scythe is set in a world where humanity has achieved total bliss all knowledge has been learned, and anyone who dies instead comes back in fresh new bodies at a clinic. The Arc of a Scythe trilogy, written by Neal Shusterman and published by Simon and Schuster, seems to try to challenge the young mind as well.
Works like The Giver and Chronicle of the Dark Star set the groundwork to challenge young minds into questioning the world around them, but fall short and end up ham-fisting easy answers in the end. But for some reason, putting out something truly speculative for younger audiences seems to be much harder than for adult audiences. Some of the best speculative works I’ve ever read are Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and Chinese SF author Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem. It’s important for people’s ideas to be challenged. Speculative fiction isn’t my favorite genre, but I can appreciate its importance.
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