Booking in Heels

Into the Drowning Deep is fine. And when I say ‘fine,’ I don’t mean the sort accompanied by a soft smile and a gentle shrug. I mean ‘fine,’ as in the type that you grudgingly spit out with a glare. I had such high expectations for it, considering I’ve heard great things and I’ve loved all Mira Grant’s other books, but there are far too many flaws in the book and not enough positive factors to redeem it. It has an interesting plot and a varied cast of characters, but the condescending tone, the sheer lack of action and the anticlimactic ending just did not do it for me.

Star rating: * *

Plot summary: Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.

Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Others seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.

Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

Interesting take on mermaids

The concept itself is great. We’re part of a scientific mission to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, to uncover what is believed to be a type of mermaid.  It’s such an interesting take on legend and the creatures are treated almost scientifically – at one point we get to see a necropsy, which is quite interesting as all their anatomical features are uncovered.

It was this idea that convinced me to pick this book up. I’d never read anything where the mermaids are almost the villian of the piece – they’re hostile, unfriendly and violent, with almost superhuman strength. No Disney princesses here! Even throughout the parts I didn’t like, I always appreciated the imaginative creation of the ‘mermaids.’

Familiar, reassuring format

Into the Drowning Deep follows the format of Mira Grant’s other works, like Parasite and FEED and their relative sequels. Each new section begins with excerpts from the transcript of a lecture, journal entries, newspaper reports, etc, after which the narrative begins. That actually works quite well with this particular story, as it has more of a scientific focus, accompanying the characters on a research vessel to the Challenger Deep. I really like this device, as it provides different perspectives and reminds us of the focus of the journey.

And now we’re heading downwards… writing and pace.

Alrighty then. I think the main issue with this book was the sheer inevitability of the plot. There’s a ship following an earlier ship that was attacked by mermaids, whose security measures don’t work, and whose passengers barely believe that mermaids will be found. You know what’s going to happen, so there are no surprises in store. Problem is, it just takes so long bloody getting there. It’s very slow. The whole 460 page book comprises the journey out and one mermaid attack – that’s it. Not a lot happens in this novel at all.

It would be fine if it was a slow-build, escalating tension sort of book, but it’s not. It’s very predictable. You knew which characters were going to die, where the mermaids were hiding and what each witty comeback would entail, because it’s just so foreseeable. Every time. Even in the final moments, I didn’t feel tense or anxious or concerned, because I knew exactly what was going to happen at every point, and I’d been too bogged down in technical descriptions of submersible vehicles.

An unpopular opinion on the diverse characters.

Speaking of getting bogged down… Alright, let’s do this.

Into the Drowning Deep, in my opinion, is an example of diversity done badly. Yes, there are a lot of represented miniorities in Into the Drowning Deep. We have deafness, chronic pain, autism, anxiety, bisexuality, lesbianism, race, and multiple examples of each, occasionally maniesting in the same character. Great. We all agree that diversity is definitely required in modern-day literature.

But the tone of it in this book is way off. It felt like it had been shoehorned in to make a point, to ensure that she was ticking the right diversity boxes. It feels forced.

It’s not subtle at all. The narrative of this science fiction novel about mermaids frequently just stops, to tell us how deaf people should be approached by a stranger, or how the Equalities Act is hindering progress in America. They’re important issues, of course, but it could have been interwoven into the plot a lot more subtly instead of literally just stopping the action. It’s mostly this that makes me think it was a tick-box exercise that I found quite condescending towards those who do experience the above circumstances.

The characters as people (you know, not as gold medals for the author).

They’re alright, actually. There are a lot of them, but I can’t say I really struggled keeping them all straight in my head.

It’s odd though – Mira Grant was very careful to give everybody (everybody) fully fleshed out backstories (usually involving their multiple disabilities), but they still seemed quite flat. This might have been something to do with the somewhat clunky dialogue, or because not a lot actually happened for the characters to do, but the only people that stood out to me were Michi and Jacques Abney. I quite liked them.

‘The lovely ladies of the sea.’

God, I hated that phrase. In one place it’s used three times on one page. If you played a drinking game with this book, and took a shot every time you say that sentence, you’d be comatose on the floor before you got two thirds of the way through.

Lastly, the ending. It’s very, very anti-climactic, to the point where I wondered what the point of it all way. It just sort of… stops. There’s a ‘twist,’ of sorts, but it was so obvious from about half way through that I only realised later, whilst reading reviews, that it was meant to be a twist.

In short, I really didn’t enjoy Into the Drowning Deep at all. It was slow and dull, with little action, condescending characters and an anti-climactic ending. I liked the concept, but found it to be executed extremely poorly.

For more positive reviews of Mira Grant’s work, check out Parasite or FEED, both of which I loved.

I have a very low bar as to deciding when my TBR is getting out of control. It literally just hinges on whether or not they will literally fit on my TBR shelves. Like most of us, I tend to gravitate towards the newer, shinier, recent additions, so what better way to remind myself what I should be reading than to do a TBR Book Tag!?

How do you keep track of your TBR pile?

Primarily with LibraryThing, which I’ve used for ten years or so now. If it ever went down, I think I’d end up crying myself to sleep. It has every book I’ve obtained and read, divided by year, since 2006. My profile is here, if you’re interested. Click ‘to read’ under the ‘Collections’ subheading. I like to arrange it in Cover View, just because seeing all the pretty covers makes me happy. I prefer LibraryThing to GoodReads, because the former understands when you own a book but haven’t read and uses different coloured tick marks when you’re looking at book lists.

I’ve been using a spreadsheet this year as well, but that’s just because I like statistics. LibraryThing is my ‘go-to’ in this area.

Is your TBR mostly print or e-Book?

Entirely print. Most of my e-books are either classics or copies of books that I already own in print, that I bought when they were cheap in case I didn’t want to carry around the real book.

Why yes, that is an unnecessarily expensive way of living.

How do you determine what book to read next?

I don’t really know. I’m a mood reader, although I usually have my next book planned in my head by the time I get two thirds through my current read.

I do go through phases of topics though. I had a ‘French Revolutionary’ spate a month or so ago, and pretty much read every book on my TBR in relation to Napoleonic Europe.

Whilst I do enjoy making TBRs (I actually do this in my head at night when I can’t sleep), I never stick to them.

What’s the book that’s been on your TBR the longest?

LibraryThing tells me that it’s The Queen’s Sorrow, by Suzannah Dunn, but it’s not. It’s actually Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I know this because it isn’t even on my LibraryThing, which means I’ve had it since before 2008. I really should just read it and get it over with – it’s hardly going to be a huge read – but eh. Not now. It looks like it’s going to be Little Women-esque, which took me six years and two rereadings to realise that I don’t actually like.

What is a book you recently added to your TBR?

I don’t count library books as additions to my TBR, so let’s see…

Ah yes. I had a £10 Waterstones voucher when I was alone in Leeds a few weeks ago, so naturally I subsequently spent £58 on books. I have read precisely zero of those books to date. LibraryThing seems to think the last book I added was Otherworld by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller, so we’ll go with that.

I don’t have a huge desire to read it anytime soon though. I wasn’t a massive fan of Warcross, so I need a bit of space from the whole virtual reality thing, I think.

What is a book on your TBR strictly because of the beautiful cover?

Haha, I ordered this book literally forty minutes ago almost entirely because of the cover, and I’ve already forgotten what it’s called!

Ah, That Inevitable Victorian Thing, by E.K. Johnson.

I think it’s something about the British Empire still being around, and if Queen Victoria’s legacy was more absolute than it is now? But look. Pretty.

What is a book on your TBR you never plan on actually reading?

I was about to get all snitty and point out that I’d never have a book on my TBR that I didn’t plan on reading at some point, however far away that point may be.

Then I remembered this particular incident, where I bought eleven Charles Dickens books. I don’t like Dickens. I’ve read A Christmas Carol, which I loved, but then I’ve also read The Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations,  Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities, two of which were tolerable and two of which I hated. Just click on the A Tale of Two Cities link for my vitriolic read-a-long check-in.

So yes, I bought eleven books that I will read at some point, but it will genuinely be when I actually force myself to pick one up out of literative guilt.

What is a book on your TBR that almost everybody has read but you?

Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas. It’s the latest installment in the Sarah J. Maas series – I can’t remember how many of the damn things there are now. Too many.

Everytime I read a new book in this series, I remember how good they are and how much I like them, but I never seem to actually want to pick them up.

It doesn’t help that Tower of Dawn seems wholly unnecessary. Instead of following the main characters, who were subjected to a huge cliffhanger at the end of the last book, we’re instead going back to follow a different character during the same time period. The story isn’t progressing forward at all, and people I trust have said that it’s too long and the whole thing could have been explained in a chapter or so in the next book instead.

I’ll read it before the next book comes out in Autumn, but I have to admit I’m not really looking forward to it.

What is a book on your TBR that everybody recommends to you?

I’m going to retrospectively say Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant. I actually finished this book late last night, but I haven’t written my review yet and I started this post before I finished it, so hey ho.

I read so many glowing reviews of this book, which is more or less the same as ‘recommending,’ but it just… urgh, no. I’m going to draft a full post later, but I’m not convinced they were reading the same book I was.

Into the Drowning Deep and I were not friends.

What is a book on your TBR that you’re just dying to read?

Hmm. There’s quite a few actually – I seem to have accumated a lot of great-sounding books recently.

For the purposes of the this question though, I think I’m +going to go with The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell.

It’s a beautiful blue hardback, broken down into bitesize entries of the daily life of a bookshop owner over the course of a year. I’m definitely in the mood for something gentle and lovely, and who doesn’t like reading about books!?

What books are on your TBR this summer? Which one are you looking forward to the most?

Thunderhead is the sequel to Scythe, the fantastic novel where natural death has been eradicated and instead a minority of the population is ‘gleaned’ by professional Scythes. If you haven’t read that book, or my review, this post will make absolutely zero sense, so I recommend heading over there first. I’ll wait.

This review will contain spoilers for Scythe.

It will also contain expletives as I try to explain the sheer mind-numbing emotional brilliance of That Ending.

Plot summary: 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?

Even though I lunged for my copy of Thunderhead pretty as soon as it dropped through my door, I wasn’t convinced I was going to like it as much as Scythe. The world-building aspects and the gleaning parts would surely be over and done with, and the over-arching plot would begin in earnest. I already knew that Citra became a Scythe whilst Rowan did not and, now that that aspect had concluded, Thunderhead may start to suffer from Second Book Syndrome. I also didn’t have a whole lot of interest in the Thunderhead itself, the almost-omnipotent artifically intelligent being that overlooks society. Conclusions? Well, I ended up being simultaneously right and wrong.

It is a lot more political and I was correct in that the world-building is finished. There are hardly any descriptions of actual gleanings or the Scythes going about their daily routine, which is the part I liked most about the first book. There are different affiliations within the Scythedom about whether restrictions should be imposed on the amount of people gleaned, what methods can be used, etc – essentially whether it should remain with its traditional routes, or move forward into a New Order. There’s a lot of political wrangling. It’s not that it’s not interesting, but I wasn’t as glued to it as I was to Scythe.

Or not for the first two thirds or so, anyway. There’s a twist that I did not see coming, and after that the plot sprinted forward at a breakneck pace. Some of the ideas and the devices used are just… unthinkable. I would never in a million years have been able to come up with such ingenious ideas and, honestly, I’m grateful I got to read the work of somebody who could.

I was actually a lot more interested in the Thunderhead than I thought I would be, simply because so much effort has been put into making her/it appear like a person. Yes, she is artificial, but she has preferences and frustrations all of her own. Instead of reading excerpts from the Scythes’ diaries, in this book we see extracts from the Thunderhead’s personal logs. She is unable to affect any influence on any issue pertaining to the Scythes, but is able to foresee the outcome of their actions, which causes her to rail against her virtual prison. It’s honestly done so, so well and the end of the book reflects her views on the matter perfectly. The Thunderhead is actually one of the best things about this book, which is bizarre considering I was expecting to have to suffer through it!

The overall best thing, however, is the ending. Fucking hell. It has to be one of the best, most shocking endings to any book, ever. I was really into the events that unfolded at the end of Thunderhead – it was very dramatic and nailbiting, and it was done really well in itself. But the actual ending? UNBELIEVABLE. I don’t think I’ve ever needed the next book in a series quite as much ever, and that is high praise indeed. Seriously though… that ending. Fuck.

What else? Oh, I’m still not buying into Citra and Rowan’s romance, but whatever. It’s a very minor part of the whole plot and doesn’t crop up often. I’ll survive.

Goodreads seems to think the next book will be called The Toll and will be released in 2019 but, considering Amazon doesn’t seem to think it’s A Thing yet, I’m trying to take deep breaths and not get too excited. I need it desperately though. In short, for a book I had medium expectations for, it is unbelievable. Even if it’s a little slow to start, I ended up even loving the parts I thought I’d hate, at that ending has to be read to be believed.

Read my review of Scythe, or visit Neal Shusterman’s website here.

Well it’s been a while since I’ve had to write an it’s-1am-and-I’m-really-tired-but-I’ve-just-finished-this-book-and-I-need-to-talk-about-it-NOW review. I finished If We Were Villains about ten minutes ago, but I’m so buzzed that there’s not much point trying to sleep at the moment anyway. I feel tense, and anxious, and slightly physically sick, and if those aren’t the markers of a good book, I don’t know what is.

Plot summary: Oliver Marks has just served ten years for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day of his release, he is greeted by the detective who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, and he wants to know what really happened a decade before.

As a young actor at an elite conservatory, Oliver noticed that his talented classmates seem to play the same characters onstage and off – villain, hero, temptress – though he was always a supporting role. But when the teachers change the casting, a good-natured rivalry turns ugly, and the plays spill dangerously over into real life.

When tragedy strikes, one of the seven friends is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless…

I’ve heard it said that this is a poor man’s The Secret History, but that is profoundly unfair. It’s definitely marketed that way and, at first glance, the premise looks similar too. A group of pretentious, sheltered young academics, one of whom eventually dies. The tone is vaguely reminiscent too – it’s gothic and mysterious, and peppered with archaic references. However. It could be that I read The Secret History long enough ago that the majority of it has faded from memory, but I still think that If We Were Villains is different enough, and M.L. Rio skilled enough, that this book can completely stand on its own.

It did take me a while to figure out which character is which. There are seven people, three female and four male, and whilst the narrative does try to emphasise that Oliver is the nice one, Meredith is the sexy one, etc, it still took about a quarter of the novel to get it straight. I can’t say this bothered me overmuch, however. At that stage, you just need to know that there are seven of them and they’re under intense amounts of pressure. It does become clear by the time anything dramatic happens.

It’s a very emotional, but in a hidden restrained way? All the emotions are sort of bubbling beneath the surface, so you’re left to interpret them and it’s perfect. Hatred, jealousy, love, lust, suspicion, despair… It’s a book that never feels the need to say ‘Wren was feeling very jealous,’ as you know damn well how she’s feeling because you can see it. Even then though, it can be interesting trying to figure out why the characters are acting as they are. What are the links between the characters? What’s going on? Are they covering for each other? It’s so wonderfully crafted.

It’s very, very tense. It’s a slowbuild book – the tension and atmosphere builds so slowly that by the time I reached the ending, my heart was beating in my chest and I felt physically sick. What an ending. Both the conclusion of the original mystery, and the current-day ending with the detective are rough and gritty and… argh. I’m still having an adrenaline spike now.

It might have helped if I’d had a slightly better knowledge of Shakespeare. I was alright with the Macbeth and the Romeo and Juliet, but they also do King Lear and Caesar, and I have absolutely zero knowledge of those. They frequently talk in Shakespeare quotes and whilst you can usually puzzle out the meaning (and it doesn’t really affect your understanding of the plot if you don’t), it might have flowed a bit better if I could. I could have taken this as a spur to go and educate myself… but I didn’t.

I finished If We Were Villains in two sittings, and I only stopped reading the first time because I absolutely had to. I was glued to this. I actually clicked onto Amazon and bought my own copy when I was about four pages from the end. It’s the sort of book you need to own.

In short, I’d really recommend it. I’m not convinced that I don’t like If We Were Villains more than The Secret History, but I’d need to reread that to nail my colours to the mast. It’s a book I’ll definitely reread and it’ll be interesting to look at the story from a different perspective, considering I now know the conclusion. It’s subtly emotional, but also tense and nail biting. Do read this – but note that you’ll be up until 1am.

Visit M.L. Rio’s website here, or find her on Twitter.

(honestly, I’ll read anything she ever writes).

I actually ended up with this book by accident. I’d ordered The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and it was only when I picked it up to look at the creepy-mystery-endpapers that I realised that I’d been sent the wrong book. Did I get in a huff and send it back? Uhh, no. I put this book on my shelf (which, in my defence, I had wanted to buy anyway) and skipped out and bought a further, proper copy of Seven Deaths. Which is brilliant and you should definitely read, by the way.

I have to say, however,  that it turned out to be a fairly fortunate accident as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is also, actually, pretty great.

Plot summary: Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband, David, has left her, and her career has stagnated. Regardless of why Evelyn has chosen her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s Upper East Side apartment, Monique listens as Evelyn unfurls her story: from making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the late 80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way. As Evelyn’s life unfolds through the decades—revealing a ruthless ambition, an unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love—Monique begins to feel a very a real connection to the actress. But as Evelyn’s story catches up with the present, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

“I am under no obligation to make sense to you,” Evelyn said.

I struggled with this book for the first chapter or so, as it starts out as fairly generic chick lit that’s been thwacked with the diversity sledgehammer. Monique’s husband has left after less than a year of marriage, her career is stagnant and she’s a little bit lost in her life. Then the famous Evelyn Hugo requests that Monique (and only Monique)  write her tell-all biography, and Monique’s life is turned around.

Monique. Necessary but uninteresting.

I could not have cared less about Monique. Don’t get me wrong, I understand her purpose. The story wouldn’t have had the same punch to it if it wasn’t mostly narrated by an elderly lady looking back on her life, and the fact that it was being told to an autobiographer with a life and opinions of her own really worked. The overarching premise just fits the aged 50s starlet concept. But I didn’t care. Those parts never really stop feeling like chick-lit. It doesn’t help than Monique has a very bitter attitude that really starts to grate after a while – she’s just sulky. And when she stops being sulky, she’s entitled.

Luckily, we don’t stay with her for long. She pops up every now and again as Evelyn’s narration gives her some perspective on her own life, but then we get back to the real story.

Evelyn, however? Fascinating.

“I guess I don’t take divorce as lightly as you,” I say. It comes out flatly. I consider softening, but… I don’t. (bloody Monique).
“No, of course not,” Evelyn says kindly. “If you did, at your age, you’d be a cynic.”
“But at your age?” I ask.
“With my experience? A realist.”
“That, in and of itself, is awfully cynical, don’t you think? Divorce is loss.”
Evelyn shakes her head. “Heartbreak is loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”
…
“If you are heartbroken right now, then I feel for you deeply,” Evelyn says. “That I have the utmost respect for. That’s the sort of thing that can split a person in two. But I wasn’t heartbroken when Don left me. I simply felt like my marriage had failed. And those are very different things.”

When Evelyn’s story gets going… frankly, it’s just wonderful. Picture the true, unabridged story of somebody like Audrey Hepburn, if she’d been married seven times with a secret life of heartbreak and scandal. It’s glamorous, gritty and riveting.

I love Evelyn Hardcastle. I love everything about her, even that the fact that she unfathomably looks like Mary Berry in my head.

She purposefully states that she wants to tell her whole story, no holds barred, free for people to judge critically. She warns that she has done some deeds she’s not particularly proud of, which may make her unlikeable in some eyes. It’s true – she’s not a saint, and she has some distinct flaws. But I love her. She’s very nuanced, even in her ‘own’ telling and it’s hard to come out of the novel not liking her.

I wish she was real so I could read her actual biography.

Another 200 pages wouldn’t go amiss.

“Do you think I’m a whore?”

 

Harry pulled over to the side of the road and turned to me. “I think you’re brilliant. I think you’re tough. And I think the word whore is something ignorant people throw around when they have nothing else.

“Isn’t it awfully convenient,” Harry added, “that when men make the rules, the one thing that’s looked down on the most is the one thing that would bear them the greatest threat? Imagine if every single woman on the planet wanted something in exchange when she gave up her body. You’d all be ruling the place. An armed populace. Only men like me would stand a chance against you. And that’s the last thing those assholes want, a world run by people like you and me.”

To say that this is a novel about a woman who got married seven times, it’s surprising that it doesn’t get repetitive at all. Each husband has a different personality and each marriage has different circumstances, and I was absolutely and definitely interested in every single one. I do wish that the story occasionally went into a bit more depth though. It’s 382 pages long but I think it could easily have been expanded to give us some more detail. It seems to fly past and I’d have loved to read more, although I suppose that’s just a marker of how much I enjoyed it.

There’s one colossal twist that’s revealed reasonably early on and I absolutely did not see it coming. It’s honestly a wonderful idea and it’s written so beautifully. It’s subtle and not at all sledge-hammery, and also quite believable for the time period.

In the end, we find out exactly why Evelyn chose Monique to write her autobiography. There are two reasons, both of which I’d predicted shortly after the start of the book. That’s fine though – it didn’t spoil my enjoyment as I was more focused on Evelyn’s narrative. It’s more a character-driven work anyway. The ending is… fitting. Again, I’d forseen it, but I was wholly on board with it.

It’s the best book I accidentally bought that I’ve ever read.

I’ve seen reviews that comment that this book reads like chick-lit. It doesn’t; not at all. Monique’s parts do, I suppose, but we’ve dealt with that already. The ‘real’ parts of the novel are fascinating and really drew me in to the topsy-turvy life of this woman in the glamorous 1950s.

I was glued to this book when I was reading it. And when I wasn’t reading it, I wanted to be. It’s unique and fascinating, and I’ve been thinking about it for days now.

Visit Taylor Jenkins Reid’s website here, or find her on Twitter.

One of my favourite topics for novels is the institutionalisation of mythical/natural concepts like death, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, etc. Think Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather or the Rise of the Guardians film. It’s a brilliant genre when it’s done well and I wish more authors would try their hand at it. Scythe is a brilliant example of how great these books can be when they’re done well.

Plot summary: In a perfect world, the only way to die is to be gleaned by a professional scythe. When Citra and Rowan are chosen to be apprentice scythes, they know they have no option but to learn the art of killing. However, the terrifying responsibility of choosing their victims is just the start.

Corruption is the order of the day and Citra and Rowan need to stick together to fight it. Then they are told that one of them will have to glean the other…

So. Science has developed to the point where any injury, even death, can be healed almost instantaneously. People are therefore living pretty much indefinitely, which is causing exactly the problems with over-population that you’d imagine. To combat this, we have the Scythes, who have to ‘glean’ a set number of people per annum in order to keep the world ticking along smoothly. It’s well-regulated, with rules, codes, conclaves and different methods of practice. And I fucking love it.

What I particularly appreciate about Scythe is that the world-building is properly and 100% established before the overarching plot gets going. I loved knowing about the details of Citra and Rowan’s apprenticeships, the gleanings that they experienced and the minutiae of how the system worked. It really established the system as a whole, and it’s so inventive and well thought out. I kept trying to poke holes to find one thing that didn’t make perfect sense, and there just wasn’t one.

I actually temporarily felt very grudging about the fact there was an over-arching plot at all. I was quite happy just dealing with the fact that Citra or Rowan will have to glean the other. Compared to the world-building (which we have already established I was completely in love with), I didn’t really need anything else. In the end though, I did really like it. It fits in neatly with the concept of gleaning and doesn’t detract from the world – this isn’t a YA novel where they’re fighting to bring the whole system down. It’s a plot within the profession of gleaning. It was a slowbuild, and it was great, honestly.

The characters could possibly have benefited from a bit of fleshing out. Citra and Rowan were a tiny bit flat, the former in particular was annoyingly prickly. I understand she’s strong and rebellious or whatever, but she doesn’t need to take umbrage at everything that’s said to her. I did like the older Scythes though – the extracts from their offically-required journals really helped to give them a little more colour. I’m also not buying the romantic aspects of Scythe – it doesn’t make sense and I think it would have worked better with a platonic friendship, but luckily it doesn’t play a huge factor at all.

As a very minor point, I loved the fact that Scythes name themselves after famous individuals who have benefited the world. Scythe Curie, Scythe, Goddard, Scythe Rand… I really enjoyed googling the lesser known names and learning a bit more.

I was actually pretty happy with the ending as well. It’s a self-contained book, so there’s no cliff-hanger ending or loose threads. The next book, Thunderhead, is more of a sequel, I think. The same characters and the same world, but the plot has moved on slightly. That’s perfect in my eyes, and it makes a refreshing change. I’d ordered it before I’d even finished Scythe, naturally.

In case I haven’t made it blindingly obvious thus far, I loved Scythe. I’d be surprised if it doesn’t make it to my favourite books of the year. I’m really looking forward to reading the sequel and I’ll definitely be reading it the second it arrives.

Visit Neal Shusterman’s website here, or find him on Twitter.