April 2020 Books of the Month
Max - My April 2020 Book of the Month was The Arc of a Scythe Trilogy by Neal Shusterman. In it, after the cloud gained sentience and became the Thunderhead, (I know, right?) it has power over everything -- except death. Controlling overpopulation is entrusted to the Scythes, who have strict orders never to contact the Thunderhead, forming the principle of the Separation between Scythe and State. Scythes basically kill random people to stop the population growth. (In the book the killing is referred to as "gleaning".) It has to be random, as they say, so it will be fair. This all may sound like a recipe for disaster (which it kind of is), but it's actually a perfect utopia. Two teenagers, Citra and Rowan, are selected by Scythe Faraday to become apprentice Scythes. Another key principle of the Scythedom is that Scyt...