Agent: Andrea Brown, Andrea Brown Literary. Is the gleaning of a few acceptable if it maximizes the happiness of all? Is it possible to live a moral life within such a system? This powerful tale is guaranteed to make readers think deeply.
Calling to mind Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Shusterman’s story forces readers to confront difficult ethical questions. Later, Citra becomes an apprentice to Curie, a legendary Scythe, but Rowan is apprenticed to Goddard, who kills for sadistic pleasure. Neither likes the idea, but they’re given no choice. It is set in a distant future where advances in technology have rendered death by natural causes obsolete, and where society is organized by an artificial intelligence system known as the Thunderhead. Sixteen-year-old Citra and Rowan are chosen by a Scythe named Faraday to train as apprentices. Scythe (2016) by Neal Shusterman is the first book in the New York Times bestselling Arc of a Scythe series. Thus evolved the Scythes, an organization whose members are charged with “gleaning” citizens at random. Because babies are still being born, population growth must be limited.
There’s no poverty or crime, and everyone is guaranteed immortality. In the future Earth of this grim novel from National Book Award–winner Shusterman ( Challenger Deep), the digital cloud has transformed into the self-aware Thunderhead, whose benevolent totalitarian rule has turned the planet into a utopia.
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