The Toll

The Toll
By Neal Shusterman
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2019. 625 pgs. Young Adult

This is the third book in the Arc of the Scythe series. It is really hard to review this book without giving away spoilers for the first two books in the series. I can't share as much as I would like in this review.

The Toll starts off three years after the cliff hanger conclusion of Thunderhead. The Thunderhead has always been silent to the Scythes but after the events at the end of the last book, the Thunderhead is silent for everyone else in the world as the ultimate punishment. It still runs the world and keeps everyone alive but people are lost without the compassionate friend and confidant that the Thunderhead has played in their lives. The only person the Thunderhead will communicate with is Greyson Tollivar. He is placed in the strange situation of people turning to him for comfort and guidance as the mouthpiece for the Thunderhead.

Goddard is back and is focused on world domination. He is the ultimate bully and no one dares stand up to him. Meanwhile a salvage captain named Jerico finds more in the wreckage of Endura than he expected and sets the world on a path that will change humankind forever.

I have to admit that this book was probably my least favorite of the three. I felt like there was a lot of  extra commentary on organized religion, propaganda, fear mongering, political issues and gender identity. It did make me stop, as a reader, and think about a lot of things that are going on in our world today. My biggest complaint is that this book felt long. It didn't hold my interest like the first two books. I still finished to find out what happened to all the characters but I felt an overall sense of disappointment that this didn't live up to my expectations for the series.

AL