Review: Thunderhead

Title: Thunderhead
Author: Neal Shusterman
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada
Source: NetGalley
Release Date: January 9, 2018
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

Rowan and Citra take opposite stances on the morality of the Scythedom, putting them at odds, in the second novel of the chilling New York Times bestselling series from Neal Shusterman, author of the Unwind dystology.

Rowan has gone rogue, and has taken it upon himself to put the Scythedom through a trial by fire. Literally. In the year since Winter Conclave, he has gone off-grid, and has been striking out against corrupt scythes—not only in MidMerica, but across the entire continent. He is a dark folk hero now—“Scythe Lucifer”—a vigilante taking down corrupt scythes in flames.

Citra, now a junior scythe under Scythe Curie, sees the corruption and wants to help change it from the inside out, but is thwarted at every turn, and threatened by the “new order” scythes. Realizing she cannot do this alone—or even with the help of Scythe Curie and Faraday, she does the unthinkable, and risks being “deadish” so she can communicate with the Thunderhead—the only being on earth wise enough to solve the dire problems of a perfect world. But will it help solve those problems, or simply watch as perfection goes into decline?

Review:

I’m so glad I had the privilege of reading this ARC.

This is a highly anticipated sequel to Scythe, and it did not disappoint. There weren’t quite as many twists as in the first one, though there were many unpredictable surprises.

The Thunderhead is the primary focus of this book. The Thunderhead is the future of “the Cloud” in the way that it holds all of our information. It is constantly monitoring the world and can make decisions, but it can’t communicate with the Scythedom.

I really liked that parts of the world other than the scythes were explored in this book. There is a new character, named Greyson, who is an ordinary boy, but then he becomes an unsavory (a group of criminals who behave in unsavory ways). I enjoyed seeing more of the scythe world that surrounds Citra and Rowan.

One of the great things about the scythe world is that there are many more possible plots for future books. There could be more books around these current scythes, but it would also be interesting to see what happened at the end of the Age of Mortality (aka our modern world) and how the scythedom was formed. I hope there’s a third book on the way!