The Toll

The Toll

By Neal Shusterman

Read in 9th grade

Book 3 in series

Book 1! Scythe

Book 2! Thunderhead (Coming soon)

The 3rd and final book in the Arc of a Scythe series. It is 3 years after the sinking of Endura, and the world has changed. Robert Goddard survived the sinking and has now proclaimed himself Overblade of North Merica, claiming it was the Grandslayers’ last action. The Thunderhead has declared everyone unsavory, closing itself off to all but one, Greyson Tolliver. The Tonist cult has used this to their advantage, naming him the Toll, their spiritual leader. Meanwhile, Goddard has turned Scythedom into an absolute dictatorship, even preventing people from salvaging Endura. He doesn’t want this because the scythe rings, the only things that can crown a scythe, are there, and all his secrets are there too. However, the Amazonian Scythedom unearths the rings. And Rowan and Citra. Citra, Scythe Anastasia, has become a legend, while Rowan is universally despised as Scythe Lucifer.

    Scythe Faraday and Munira have stumbled upon the Marshall Atolls, a blind spot for the Thunderhead, created by the Founding Scythes as a failsafe. Behind all this, the Thunderhead is using Greyson and its newfound knowledge of the Atolls (which it discovered on one of its cameras while Faraday and Munira were talking) to orchestrate a plan to save humanity at all costs. After they are revived, Citra goes into hiding, with a mission to reveal Goddard, while Rowan is sent to his death. It turns out that the extraterrestrial settlements didn’t fail because of the Thunderhead’s mistakes. It was scythe interference. The mass gleanings of thousands were conducted to save the Scythedom, because if people could colonize other planets, they wouldn’t need to be gleaned anymore. And Goddard helped. To make things worse, Rowan escaped his gleaning, further ruining Goddard’s image.

    By chance (or perhaps not, because the Thunderhead made it happen), Rowan, Citra, and Greyson all come together and are sent to the Atolls, where the Thunderhead is building rockets. For what purpose, only it knows. With Citra, Faraday can finally unlock the Founders’ failsafe, which required two scythes to open.

    Unfortunately for the Thunderhead, its plans are about to be foiled again because of Goddard. The spaceships were meant to be sent to inhabitable planets to save humanity, each with a Thunderhead humanoid named Cirrus. As Goddard shoots them down, they are sent off into space, with Citra and Rowan on one of the 42. Meanwhile, Faraday and Munira activate the failsafe - it breaks every scythe ring, ending the Scythedom, and activates pain nanites in every body. They are meant to replicate uncurable mortal age diseases like cancer. Every 20 years, 5% of Earth’s population will die, thus maintaining the balance of life and death.

    Light years away, Rowan and Citra open their eyes to a new planet, and a new beginning.