Scythe

by Neal Shusterman · 2016

In a future where humanity has eradicated hunger, disease, war and even death, the only way to keep the planet from bursting at the seams is through the Scythes—trained arbiters who alone are permitted to end lives. When two teenagers, Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch, are selected as apprentices, they are thrust into a world of ritualized killing that feels as much an art as a duty. Neither wants the mantle, yet they must learn to wield the scythe with precision, compassion, and ruthless efficiency, or risk losing their own lives. As their training deepens, the pair discover that the veneer of a perfect society hides a brutal moral calculus, and the choices they make will shape the fate of a world that thought it had solved every problem—except the cost of its own survival.