...
March 28, 2024

Novel Lives

Book Publicity, Book Reviews, And Author Interviews

I'm Broke. Neal Shusterman Reveals Cover and Excerpt of The Toll (Arc of a Scythe Book 3) via Entertainment Weekly and I'm Broke.- updated because apparently I was drinking when I originally wrote it lol?

This broke me so bad I apparently lost the ability to be lucid. So I just edited it… but from my phone so take it with a grain of salt 😉

HEADS UP RIGHT NOW. I’M FULLY BREAKING THIS EXCERPT DOWN. IF YOU HAVEN’T READ SCYTHE/THUNDERHEAD AND PLAN TO? STOP RIGHT NOW. CEASE. DESIST. GO NO FURTHER.

But if you want everything I could find piecemeal and put together as best as I could? Carry-on my friends.


Scythe (Arc of a Scythe)


I’d love to think that is Citra and Rowan in the back and the only person that the Thunderhead is talking to, (WHAT IS THAT, EVEN) Greyson, in front- because

emotional flailing

if it is Soddard all the emotional flailing. I don’t know how to exist in a world with him in charge? I just… oh hell…  see Ms. Peacock and Ms. White above.
Amazon does add a couple sentences indicating Citra and Rowan’s survival (see below) and a three-year time jump that was long rumored, in their all too short, but telling description. See those words in red, below,… who else it could it be?
Yeah. Come at me bro. BRING IT. That has to be Rowan and Citra.>

“It’s been three years since Rowan and Citra disappeared; since Scythe Goddard came into power; since the Thunderhead closed itself off to everyone but Grayson Tolliver.”
In this pulse-pounding conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy, constitutions are tested and old friends are brought back from the dead.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THREE-FREAKING YEARS SINCE THE THUNDERHEAD CUT ITSELF OFF???? HAS IT LOST ITS EVER-LOVING MIND?? FINE CALL ME UNSAVORY. I DON’T EVEN CARE. I DON’T

Dorothy Who are you To Judge Me
Yes it was palpable. Throughout Thunderhead, it came off in waves. It wasn’t a hatred of humankind. Of course not. That isn’t in the Thunderhead’s nature. It was more of a resigning to the fact that as much as he wanted what was best and knew what was best?
At the the end of the day, even the Thunderhead, could not protect humankind from itself. Furthermore, knowing that they was never to be interference of the Thunderhead in the Sycthedom didn’t mean the Thunderhead didn’t see the projectory hurtling out of control.

BUT STILL– THREE YEARS? BECAUSE THAT IS GOING TO HELP. AND TO LEAVE POOR GREYSON THE ONLY ONE IN TOUCH WITH THE THUNDERHEAD FOR THREE YEARS?? SERIOUSLY?\

On a side note- when I said this series ran right behind the Six of Crows duology as second in my heart- as you can see? I wasn’t kidding.

Moving on… I checked Edelweiss and the blurb is the same. So on to the big reveal from Entertainment Weekly. 
I’m going to pull out the bits and pieces. The beginning starts off with us completely in the blind. For a moment I thought we were dealing with Rowan and Citra being pulled out of their watery tombs.
Oh, but no, it is Greyson being kidnapped from the Tonists he’d been living with — or hiding with– by the Nimbus (or what were the nimbus) and who could blame him? Everyone is looking for him since the Thunderhead won’t talk to anyone else in… all together now… THREE YEARS.
And, look, don’t get me wrong. We are all rooting for Greyson/Slayd Bridger. We have been. We saw him start as a secondary shadow of a character that was kind of lost and trying to find his way.
Then suddenly Slayd is marked Unsavory, fighting to seve all these important people. Meanwhile, he believes the Thunderhead has abandoned him and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The second installment of Arc of a Scythe closes out simply, quietly, but with all the force of a nuclear weapon. The Thunderhead returns to Greyson with: “We need to talk.”

Nimbus agents resorting to kidnapping. What was the world coming to?
“Greyson Tolliver,” said the doubtful one, and, looking at a tablet, he recite the salient facts of Greyson’s life. “Good student, but not great. Expelled from the North Central Nimbus Academy for a violation of scythe/state separation. Guilty of numerous crimes and misdemeanors under the name of Slayd Bridger—including rendering 29 people deadish in a bus plunge.”
“And this is the slime that the Thunderhead chose?” said the third agent.
The one in charge put up her hand to silence them both, then leveled her gaze at Greyson.
“We’ve scoured the backbrain, and we’ve only been able to find a single person who isn’t unsavory,” she said. “You.” She looked at him with a strange mix of emotions. Curiosity, envy… but also a sort of reverence. “That means you can still talk to the Thunderhead. Is that true?”
“Anyone can speak to the Thunderhead,” Greyson pointed out. “I’m just the one it still talks back to.”
 

–Ok- I get the last line- but still if the Thunderhead doesn’t talk back– well how is that going to help guide anything. Obviously it isn’t doing much for the Nimbus (well former Nimbus agents) and if they are resorting to kidnapping then I can’t imagine what the common people are up to… if anything… without guidance!
Furthermore– are we to believe that EVERY SINGLE PERSON IS NOW UNSAVORY  EXCEPT Greyson? I mean that has to make most people feel pretty damn crappy and well that also explains why the Thunderhead isn’t talking to anyone since he kinda has a rule about that and all. Except that doesn’t seem fair at all. I mean this really isn’t EVERYONE’s FAULT. 
I get it. No interfering in the Sythedom. But hell Soddard is the demigod Narcissistic Trump-like wanna be dictator/tyrant here. Punishing everyone certainly isn’t going to help bring that under control.  And that much is pretty much confirmed, at least for the Nimbus, but again, I would have to assume that if the Nimbus feel this way- everyone else must be in much worse condition, in the last next part of the conversation between Greyson and the agents that kidnapped, or so they say “liberated” him from the tonists.

Then the one in charge knelt before him, so they were at eye-level. Now he could see something else in her eyes—something that overpowered her other emotions. Desperation. A pit of it, dark and as consuming as tar. And it wasn’t just her, Greyson realized; it was a shared desperation. He’d seen others struggling with grief since the Thunderhead fell silent, but nowhere was it as abject and raw as it was in this room. There weren’t enough mood nanites in the world to ease their despair. Yes, he was the one tied up, but they were more prisoners than he, trapped by their own despondency. He liked that they had to kneel down to him; it felt like supplication.
“Please, Greyson,” she begged. “I know I speak for many of us in the Authority Interface when I say that serving the Thunderhead was our whole lives. Now that the Thunderhead has fallen silent, that life has been stolen from us. So I beg you… can you please intercede on our behalf?”
What could Greyson say, but, “I feel your pain.” Because he truly did. He knew the loneliness and the misery of having one’s purpose stripped away. In his days as Slayd Bridger, the undercover unsavory, he had come to believe that the Thunderhead had truly abandoned him. But it hadn’t. It was there all along, watching over him.

At that point Greyson asks for an earpiece… to help intercede? Maybe. But even if he does, will the Thunderhead let him? Or will he shut himself off to Greyson as well? Mercy.
Then we get a short insight from the Thunderhead. And during this short insight we find out a couple of very important pieces of information.

  • The Thunderhead allowed Greyson to be kidnapped… to what end? What reason? Don’t know.
  • It is still in great distress, believing that the coming months would bring more grief, more and more difficult decisions. The right decisions but difficult ones, none the less.

The Thunderhead’s awareness came with a mission. The core of its being. It was, above all else, the servant and protector of humanity. As such, it faced difficult decisions on a regular basis, but had the full wealth of human knowledge to make those decisions…
In the moment, people might not understand, but in the end they would. The Thunderhead had to believe that. Not just because it felt this in its virtual heart, but also because it had calculated the odds of it being so.

Well… Quite Literally… To the Storyman’s Credit…

broke me too far GIF

Unless a miracle happens and an ARC does appear… I don’t know how I will make it to November… but to this point I have analyzed this as far as I can.
I WILL BE IN LIFEGUARD CERTIFICATION TRAINING FROM LIKE 8 AM till 7 PM OR SO TODAY.
BUT I WILL BE DYING TO SEE EVERYONE’S RESPONSES AND WILL BE ALL IN ON THIS DISCUSSION!

HIT ME WITH IT ALL! EVEN IF IT IS JUST TO TELL ME I’VE LOST MY MIND. BELIEVE ME, I ALREADY KNOW BUT FEEL FREE TO CONFIRM!

BUT I HOPE THIS PROVIDES A PLACE FOR THERAPY AND DISCUSSION!!! LETS GO!!!!!

Verified by MonsterInsights