Scythe

The novel Scythe by Neal Shusterman is the first book in the dystopian "Arc of a Scythe" series. In this series, a future society has conquered death, disease, and war, leading to overpopulation. To manage the population, a group known as scythes are chosen to glean, or take, lives. The story follows two teenagers, Citra and Rowan, who are selected to apprentice under a scythe, forcing them to confront their own morality and the complex ethical questions surrounding life and death in their seemingly utopian world. The novel explores themes of power, corruption, and the definition of humanity when mortality is no longer a given.1