Thunderhead Review
Since that fateful Winter Conclave a year ago, Rowan has become a vigilante known as Scythe Lucifer, murdering unworthy and corrupt scythes. Citra has grown into Scythe Anastasia, retaining the ideas of the original scythes. Her life, along with Scythe Curie's, are put in danger for the ideals they hold. War brews within the scythedom. Will the Thunderhead, the perfect version of "the cloud" that oversees the entire world, step in before the scythedom rips itself apart?
Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinion. This review is only my opinion, and you may have your own, different one. I would take into consideration what I say, but do not make a decision about the book solely based off of this review. Let's begin:
Unlike the first book, the action begins right away. It is not slow at all, so I always wanted to read more. Now, the action was not always classic action (ie. fighting, gleaning, etc.). There was a lot of instances where it was political, which may not sound as intriguing, but it is. There is a lot of political situations within the scythedom, especially during the conclaves, where things get a bit heated, and you get to see its different sides. Due to this, I would highly recommend that anyone who has an interest in politics read this series. However, there is still much classic action. The gleanings are just as fun to read as they were in the first book because of the intense emotions that go with those scenes. The sparring is the same way considering Bokatar has an emotional aspect to it. The action and politics had an overall good balance that left me entertained the entire time I was reading.
I believe that Neal Shusterman's strongest area is his endings, and this book reinforced that idea. The ending was spectacular and made me really excited to pick up the final book in the trilogy. So much happened and there were so many emotions in the final few chapters that I was not able to put it down and actually got mad when I was interrupted.
There were a couple of minor formatting and grammatical errors. For example, a couple of times the text was suddenly a different font and size (go to page 160 if you already have the book to see what I mean). These are few and far between, though, and do not hinder the reading experience.
My largest complaint is the same as it was with the first book- the romance. Once again, it feels too sudden and forced, leaving me unable to feel any sort of attachment to the relationships. I was hopeful that this issue would have been resolved as far as Rowan and Citra were concerned within this book (ie. the author would have made up for the lack of development from book one in book two). This, sadly, did not happen. There was a new relationship along with a semi-one (I will not say names or explain the half relationship so as to avoid spoilers) that had the same issues as the one between Rowan and Citra. I absolutely love the romance aspects of books normally, so this has been a major let down with this series that does not seem to have any hope of being resolved. This is the only reason I did not give this book or the first one the full five stars.
While this has nothing to do with any super important aspect of a book (ie. plot, characters, etc.), I really wanted to mention it because I love that Shusterman did this. I learned that he has great taste in areas other than books. He masterfully incorporated references to other things, such as James Bond and Star Wars, that bring about a little smile when you are reading. This is just a little something extra that made me enjoy the book even more.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, though I would emphasize the recommendation for people interested in politics simply because I love that aspect of this series. It was a very very enjoyable read, and I cannot wait to start the final book in the trilogy!
Rating: 4/5 stars
Author: Neal Shusterman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
# of Pages: 504
Genre: YA, Science Fiction
Series: The Arc of a Scythe trilogy
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