The premise of this book is so good, I had trouble imagining how the story could live up to my expectations. But it did. It had me at the edge of my seat like no other book I had read this year. 

The pace was masterful. First you are introduced to the main characters, Citra and Rowan . They are both very similar, in the way that each of them is very smart but also compassionate about others. They are both chosen to be Scythe apprentices under Scythe Faraday tutoring because of that.  And as the story progresses, the circumstances lead them to have similar ideals but different priorities.

And speaking about ideals. We get to explore the different methods and values of each Scythe through their diaries. This was definitely a highlight of the book. It was so interesting! Scythe Faraday, is a good Scythe, he gleans with compassion, effectiveness and a lot of research goes into picking the subjects. Scythe Curie, is also compassionate, but she believes in the unpredictability of life, and gleans accordingly. Scythe Goodard however, well I’d argue that he is not a very good Scythe, and the narrative agrees, but it also presents a counterargument, and that made each of the Scythes philosophy really intriguing to read. 

The worldbuilding of this story is really rich. You can tell that the author considered all the answers to the questions that he raised and tried to incorporate them into the world.And that made it feel like, if science really could defeat death, this could be how the world would develop.

I love dystopian stories. What intrigued me the most about this one personally, is how it debates with itself, through the different points of view, if it is actually a dystopia or an utopia that JUST needs a little fixing to be truly perfect. And is that not just the definition of dystopia anyway? Take a shot every time you read the word “dystopia”. 

I don't know, but I found it really fascinating how even the characters that are supposed to question the status quo, most of the time are saying noo, the world IS perfect, we just need to kill a couple Scythes and everything will be alright again. They are not really trying to implement a new system, they believe in their hearts that if everyone just did their damn jobs their utopia would be just fine. I can't wait to see their character development and read how that changes… or not, that would also be interesting to tackle.

Finally, I think that the last star of this book was the writing. I usually struggle with multiple povs, especially at the beginning, because it takes you out of the story every time you change characters. But in this book, it literally never happened. I think it was because there were compelling ideas and worldbuilding on every page, no matter who was narrating.

I enjoyed this immensely. See you in the next book!