Citra, now a junior scythe under Scythe Curie, sees the corruption and wants to help change it from the inside out, but is thwarted at every turn, and threatened by the “new order” scythes. Realizing she cannot do this alone—or even with the help of Scythe Curie and Faraday, she does the unthinkable, and risks being “deadish” so she can communicate with the Thunderhead—the only being on earth wise enough to solve the dire problems of a perfect world. But will it help solve those problems, or simply watch as perfection goes into decline?
Review: I enjoyed Thunderhead way more than Scythe. Citra and Rowan both greatly embrace their Sythe personas which makes them feel like completely different characters from book 1. That is extremely impressive on Neal's part. I also loved how we could follow Rowan and Citra separately, but we could also see their influence on each other throughout the story. That's another impressive thing Neal was able to pull off. There were some new characters like Greyson. He, like Rowan and Citra, ends up having 2 personas throughout this story, but for different reasons. I think he does a great job of being a representation of this world's underbelly. The last "new" character I want to bring up is the Thunderhead. Even in Scythe, the Thunderhead is pretty much their deity and Neal does have great moments where we can see how different people view the Thunderhead. In Thunderhead, the Thunderhead becomes a more central being and we see how it perceives the world around it. I will say that I want the Thunderhead to be the true antagonist of this series. I won't say why I feel that way, but I think it would be interesting.
The story in Thunderhead was as compelling as in Scythe. Of course, because we already know some of the characters, there might be some more investment in what happens. There were some moments that I saw coming. They were developed well, but it was still easy to see. Then there were some things that I genuinely didn't see coming. Neal is certainly not afraid to make his characters suffer for their decisions which I appreciate. In Scythe, the scenes between the chapters were diary entries from Curie and Faraday. In Thunderhead, these scenes are entries from the Thunderhead itself. I thought that was a great decision because it does allow for the Thunderhead to be as much a part of the story as any other character. Another thing I'm glad Neal expanded on was the hierarchy of the Scythedom. We still get to see the Scythes and High Blades we already know, but we also get to see what it's like for these characters to get their titles. We also get to see the inclusion of Grandslayers which was an interesting addition. I hope that gets developed a bit more in the next book.
Thunderhead was much better than Scythe, and it allowed for character growth as well as character addition.
4 howls
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