Scythe

What a nasty book. I was entertained, it's a fun read, but the core of it is such an awful and brutal conceit that I'm more than a little disturbed at this being young adult entertainment.

The book is a lot like the first Hunger Games book, to a fault. Teenagers pitted against each other by adults in some bizarre artificial contest, a friendship / slight romance between the teens, a corrupt government. But the details are much more personal. Where the book is at its strongest is in the worldbuilding, talking about the weird society of immortality along with a special caste of endorsed killers to cull the herd. The idea is interesting and there could be a lot more.

But also like Hunger Games the core problem is that the book's entertainment is reading about teenagers being taught to be brutal killers all in preparation to kill each other. It's so awful! But whereas Collins redeems her books by making the next two in the trilogy all about the awfulness of that society and the pain of the blood sport.. It's not clear that's where Shusterman is going with Scythe. I was more than a little uncomfortable reading the book because of that.

But that's a lot of hand writing, and goodness knows when I was the age of the target audience I was reading all sorts of awful depraved stuff. (And often without the self-awareness.) The plot itself is pretty well told, the characters are well drawn, there's a few good twists. Enjoyed reading it and will probably read the next.