Inside cover blurb:
“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?”
-from publisher
Thoughts:
For once, I actually like a sequel more than the original.
Thunderhead delves much deeper into, well you might have guessed it, the Thunderhead, the sentient cloud device that runs the world on behalf of humanity.
Instead of diary entries between chapters, like in Scythe, we are now being treated to snippets of the Thunderhead’s thoughts- these are probably my favorite part of the book because the Thunderhead and I seem to be pretty like minded.
Rowan and Citra practically take a back seat in this story- and a new hero, Greyson Tolliver emerges. He’s just a regular guy tasked with a secret mission from the Thunderhead. Let me just say, I do not envy him. You’ll see why.
And as we know from Scythe, *spoiler alert* Rowan and Citra’s mentor Scythe Faraday is still alive. And now he’s back, looking for the Land of Nod, where the founders of the Scythedom may have built a fail safe should their system become corrupt.
Looks like they might be needing that soon…
I can’t wait for the final book in the trilogy! Hopefully we won’t have long to wait.
Plus: Sentient technology, amazing dystopian world building, important ethical questions…and the Scythes are super cool.
Minus: We only get one more book! I’m not even a huge fan of dystopia novels, but I’ll make an exception for this one.
If you like this book, try:
Unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner- I’m not even sure what to compare Thunderhead to. But as far as advanced tech and a planet in peril, Unearthed might just do the trick. And this one has aliens!