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The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, Book 3) by Neal Shusterman

Absolutely amazing, BUT... 👍👍👍🤷‍♂️

As expected, The Toll is beautifully written and does a fantastic job of maintaining the philosophical wonder that has made the series great. As a matter-of-fact, Arc of the Scythe is BY FAR the most thought-provoking dystopian series out there, and deserves to be a must read for any YA fan. A damn-near perfect trilogy.

That being said, I’m VERY big on endings. I believe that a bad ending can ruin a great book, and a great ending can save a bad book. And The Toll somehow manages to fall in the gray area between. It’s not a bad ending, just not an ending I think I agree with.

It didn’t leave me contemplating the deeper meaning of the mortality of man; the rampant threat of overpopulation; our increasing dependency on cloud computing; or our societies near worship of A.I. deities.

Instead it made me wonder, “really, you went that route?” In an almost borderline Stephen King kind of way (who is notorious for not knowing how to end his books), the story didn’t seem to have a planned endgame. Loose threads were being wrapped up, but the nagging question of where do our characters go from here still loomed.

*SPOILER*
Turns out the author’s answer was simple: Somewhere else. The world went to shit, so they just left.