Scythe by Neal Shusterman

    Swearing: 2/10 characters used the word hell or the "A" word a few times throughout the book

    Sexual Content: 4/10 a short kiss, character makes lewd comment, and character talks about a time when she wanted to be in bed with a man 

    Violence: 8/10 the book is about death

    Recommended Age: 14+

     Hello and welcome, it’s good to see that you are still with me, even though most of you are my friends and are then obligated to read everything I post on my blog. This next review is on a book that I wasn't planning on reading this year, but it was conveniently available, and I had no other book to read, but the fourteen others I've already started. I stumbled upon it while a friend and I were browsing a bookstore. My friend bought it and then lent it to me sometime later. There are a lot of good things about this book, and I was thoroughly impressed with how the author told this story, but we'll get into that later in the dissection post. 

    The book is told in two main perspectives: Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch. In the story the world is a perfect place and has been a perfect place for several centuries. World hunger, greedy politicians, poverty, sickness, and even death has been defeated, leaving the world with only one important issue: overpopulation. The solution to this problem is scythes.

    They are hated or they are worshiped, but they have one job to do nonetheless. To kill, or as they say "glean", a certain amount of people. Though the main characters detest scythes, both are selected to be an apprentice under one. Only one of them can become a scythe, while the other must die. 

  If you are into books like The Hunger Games, The Giver, Divergent, and such, I recommend that you put this book on your TBR (to be read). What I loved most about this book was the fact that it is completely different from the other dystopian novels I’ve read. Many dystopian YA books feel like they are just another version of The Hunger Games, but this book feels like it's own story.

  The book does have some minor profanities strewn throughout the book such as the word "hell" or the "A" word. As for sexual content there is a short kiss shared between two characters and the narrator tells the reader that one character slaps another's butt and promises to do certain things with them when they are old enough. There is also a scene where one character tells another a story about her and a man and how she wanted to climb into bed with him when she was young. I would say it is a good book for teens, fourteen maybe thirteen years and up. 

    The book was intriguing and I finished it within a few days. I love the story line and will definitely read the next two books of the trilogy. Neal Shusterman is a great author and after I finish the Arc of the Scythe trilogy I hope to check out some of his other books. 

    I know I said that the next post would be a dissection of 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons, but that is coming along pretty slowly and is a little harder to write than I thought. I will have it done sometime this month.

--N