Scythe

In a distant future, humanity has conquered death. Disease, aging, and even fatal accidents are things of the past, all overseen by the Thunderhead—a benevolent artificial intelligence that has quietly perfected human society. The only deaths that remain are those chosen deliberately by scythes, an elite order tasked with keeping the population in check through a solemn act called gleaning.

When teenagers Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch are selected as apprentices to the principled Scythe Faraday, they are thrust into a vocation neither of them wanted. Over the course of a year they must master the disciplines of a killer—weapons, poisons, history, and the weight of ending a life responsibly—knowing that only one of them will earn the scythe's ring.

As their training deepens, Citra and Rowan discover a widening rift within the scythedom itself: between an old guard that treats gleaning as a sacred duty and a rising faction that revels in slaughter. Caught between conscience and ambition, the two apprentices are forced to ask what it means to kill well, and whether a flawless world is worth the cost of the people who must police its edges.

The first book in Neal Shusterman's Arc of a Scythe trilogy, Scythe is a thought-provoking speculative thriller about mortality, power, and the moral price of utopia.