Book ReviewThunderhead by Neal Shusterman

Hey! What's up, you guys? It's Connor, and
today I'm gonna be doing a book review for a Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman.
Thunderhead is the second book in the Arc of a Scythe series. In the first book... It's
called Scythe. I did a book review for that book as well, so I'll leave it
linked if you want to check it out.

Also I was sent this book by the publisher
for a sponsored video which I've already done, but this video is not sponsored.
Regardless, my thoughts and feelings are my own. I just wanted to let you guys
know that I did get this book for free. If you guys don't know, the Arc of a Scythe
series follows two characters that are living in this world where humans have
become immortal. Every time they start to age too much or age to a point that they
are no longer enjoying life, they are able to do what's called "turning the
corner," and they are turned back into a younger version of themselves.

So if they
turn 55/60 they're able to "turn the corner" and turn back into 25 or 30
year-olds if they want to. Because people never die, the population of humans
on Earth has grown exponentially, and the only way that people naturally die
anymore is if they are caught in a fire and burn to death or something similar
to that like acid or the body can't be found kind of thing. The only other way
that humans are killed is by a group of people called scythes, and scythes are
tasked with culling people. And they're supposed to do it without bias, and so
there's different quotas of different types of people that you have to kill.
There's a quota for men versus women and also different cultures and ethnicities
and colors of people.

So there's a certain number of black people that you
have to kill, and a certain number of white people, and a certain number of Asian people, etc. [This isn't technically true. You just aren't allows to be too out of balance.] And the main two characters are trying to become a part of this system. The entire world is run by one single AI system called the Thunderhead, and the Thunderhead is something that people actually really enjoy.

The
Thunderhead takes care of people, and gets them jobs, and has established a
minimum pay that everyone gets no matter what. So they don't actually have to work
if they don't want to, but most people do want to work because then life would be
very boring. And he takes care of everything on the entire Earth. There are
no governments anymore.

There's just different regions. It's the Thunderhead
and the scythedom that are running the entire world, and then this book takes
place a year after Scythe. As usual with my book reviews, I'm going to go through
my pros, go through my cons, give you my rating, and be done. My first pro for this
book is that it does take place a significant chunk of time after the
first one, so the characters have really had time to grow and change
after the events of the first book finished.
Citra has really grown into her own and has really solidified into the person
that she's gonna be.

Her morals are pretty concrete, and I really enjoyed
seeing her navigate through this world after the events of the first book. Rowan,
on the other hand, is still figuring it out,
and I really enjoyed that juxtaposition of Citra being so sure of herself... I mean
she is still young. The characters are only eighteen, but she is pretty steady
on her feet, and Rowan is trying to figure out what direction he wants to
take, kind of thing.

So I really enjoyed the fact that they've been up to things
within the past year that you're kind of catching up on as well as following them
as the plot moves along. I really enjoyed secondary characters
that were introduced as well. Grayson is such an interesting character. I really
enjoyed his point of view and his take on the world because instead of the
point of view of two characters that have been chosen to become scythe apprentices, you had a character that has nothing to do with the scythedom at
all.

He is just a normal Joe Shmoe character, and you get to see how he
views this same world. How he views the Thunderhead. How he views the scythedom. How
he views himself within society.

It was really cool to get that side of things.
Another secondary character that we get to meet is Maria, and she was super, super
interesting as well for other reasons. Honestly, the characters that Neal
Shusterman has introduced to the series in this book as well as the ones that
he's kept up with from the first book have all been very intriguing and very
engaging. I just want to know more and more about all of these characters, so I
really enjoyed that in this book. In this world, scythes are required to keep
journals, and in the first book you get journal entries from a bunch of
different scythes which from my review, a lot of people said that they did not
read those interludes.

And I think that you are missing out if you didn't read
them, but in this book instead of getting journal entries from scythes, you get
little interludes from the Thunderhead's point of view which was so awesome
because you could definitely see how the Thunderhead is viewing himself and his
role when it comes to people and how he's the caretaker of humans. But it also
follows him as he's learning that he doesn't know everything, and that upsets
him. And so you see a slow progress of the Thunderhead shifting the way that he
thinks and the way that he feels. I guess I'm saying "he," but the Thunderhead
doesn't have a gender.

This slow shift of the
Thunderhead's position and how he views itself really adds to the tension of the
book, and the tension throughout this novel is just growing, and growing, and
growing. It's the perfect amount of tension though. It's not so much so that
it gives you anxiety and you're getting stressed. It's enough tension that it keeps
you on your feet, and it keeps you reading, and reading, and reading which is
one of my favorite things that a book can do especially when there's POV
shifts.

This character ends on a cliffhanger, so you have to read the POV
of these couple characters so you can get back to that character. Bah! That it was so much fun. Another thing that I liked was just that
in this series in general it just addresses things of: who decides who dies
and who lives? Is it right for anyone to have that power? Is it right for anyone
to decide who lives and who dies? Is it even right for someone to decide when
they die? All of those concepts were things that I really was interested in
reading about, so I really loved seeing them in this novel. And the last thing
was that just the way that this book ended, I was floored.

I need the next book
right now. And Thunderhead just came out recently, so I have a very long time
until the next book comes out. But I want to know what's gonna happen next right
now! Now I'm gonna talk about a couple of my cons. I don't absolutely love when
books end on cliffhangers which is kind of what this book did.

If I have access
to the next book, it's something that I. Kind of enjoy because then I can jump
right into the next one. But with this one, I have to wait for it, so now I'm a
little bit annoyed. But that's a personal problem, and because I couldn't think of
any other cons on my own, I looked up a couple of reviews.

People have said
that they haven't appreciated the POV. Shifts in the middle of the chapter, so
from one paragraph to another sometimes it switches the character that you're
following and which character you get inside of the head of. And those people
have a hard time jumping from one person to another when it's not clearly stated.
Here it just switches from one to the other without saying it directly. You
learn pretty early on within that paragraph which character you're
following, but I can definitely see why that would be difficult for some people
to follow.

But as I said, that didn't affect my reading experience. I
absolutely loved this book. In the end, I ended up giving this book 5 stars. I
loved it.

I gave the first book four and a half stars, I believe, and this one 5
stars. So I'm just loving this series so much, and I definitely recommend it to
people that are intrigued about it check it out. So that's gonna be my review of
Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman. If you liked it, please give it a big thumbs
up and comment down below have you read this book.

Have you read Scythe, and you're
just waiting to read Thunderhead? Have you read anything by Neal Shusterman?
Anything you want me to know, leave it down below, and I will talk to you guys
next time. Bye! <Finger gun and tongue click>.