Thunderhead, by Neal Shusterman (Book Review)

 

“It is my pleasure to be at your displeasure.”

…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?…

“The two of them against each other. The two of them against the world. Everything in their lives was now defined by that binary. If they had to die today in order to live, it would somehow be wrong if they didn’t do it together.”

Book two! I read this right after finishing Scythe, which was a while ago as you can see from my latest post. This book was probably the first book I read that really made me think. And now that probably sounds bogus, cause like that is literally what books do to you while you read, but like—this book made you think. The world Shusterman created was like…woah. I know that I have felt that way with The Hunger Games, and The Giver, and any and every dystopian book you read, but this one was crazy. But the even crazier thing is that like…it doesn’t seem all that far off. That is was one of the things that really made me think. MidMerica, Greyson and the unsavories, and even the Thunderhead was like just other names for things already just slightly in the distance. Like things we are literally working towards right now with technology.

“That’s exactly what the scythedom is: high school with murder.”

The plot follows right from the ending of Scythe, so there wasn’t really any dialogue we missed or had to get caught up on, which was nice., but the lot following is fairly different. Following the Thunderhead and The Toll it was actually so unique. More on that when we get to The Toll, but again, Shusterman just made you think a lot. I didn’t know how this series was gonna end at all, being that there was just odd changes and turns as this story progressed.

I really wanted to see more of Rowan and Citra, but we were jumping around quite a bit with prospective here, and there were some parts where we’d go from not seeing either of them for quite a few chapters. The new character—Greyson—coming into play was cool, the newness was nice, but again, I like it when series continue with the same characters and I felt a little like I didn’t get enough of Rowan especially. 

Tyger is still my favorite. Although I almost died in this book. Shusterman has a tendency to scare you, that’s for sure. Greyson was…fine, I guess. He didn’t really sick out to me, but I thought his alter ego, Slayd, was cool and had jokes. 

The romance, again, was kind of just like not there for me. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but it was definitely a subplot, mostly one liners quotes and almost just like you are supposed to know Cirta and Rowan love eachother, but you didn’t really see that, at least from my point of view.  It is definitely a plot driven series. 

“So let’s escape, 
Due south of Wake, 
And make for the Land of Nod.”

I recommend it for ages 14+. There wasn’t really anything super descriptive, due to Shusterman writing style mostly, but there were a few things implied. Mostly just one liners, and I think it was two scenes, but only one that had anything actually implied but was closed door, but to note. Probably a 7 out of 10 for me. Not as good as the first one, but a good addition to the series, although I still feel like you could read the first as a standalone if you wanted to. 

CLICK HERE to get the book!

Tally ho,

Finlee