One admirable device that hints at the end, without spoiling it, is Shusterman’s use of fictional scholarship, written in a time far in the future of the events of the book, which provides insights into the present characters and story, as well as the way we think about the past. I got the sense, certainly influenced by my opinion of the first two books, that Shusterman is better than this book suggests. So whichever you’re looking for, you’ll get it every now and then. To be fair, Shusterman attempts to alternate between catering to adrenaline junkies and proposing a genuine connection. fiction-designed to provoke that sweet snap of adrenaline rather than inspire a lasting personal connection with the characters. The Toll also employs set action pieces-far too typical of Y.A. Be precise and remember that words have meaning.) Action! Substance and Plot Missing… (My apologies to grade-schoolers everywhere. It isn’t nearly as shameless as the screen-craving Hunger Games atrocities, but in places it looks like a bad college essay written the night before it’s due, trying to disguise its tardiness by flaunting disproportionately big (and sometimes misused) vocabulary in the middle of grade school level sentences. I had perhaps too great hopes for the third book, The Toll. Thunderhead, the second book (not reviewed on the Forum), raised the bar even higher. If you read my Scythe review, you’ll know that the first book in Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy entranced and intrigued me.

Thunderhead the toll