Literature / Arc of a Scythe

What does humanity do in a perfect world?

Arc of a Scythe is a sci-fi novel series by Neal Shusterman that takes the teen dystopia genre and turns it on its head: rather than showing yet another science fiction Dystopia, the series deconstructs the very idea of a Utopia by taking the most common idea of Utopia and showing the consequences of a truly peaceful, conflict-free world.

In the far future, humanity has successfully eradicated all diseases. There is no war. All governments are under the control of a Benevolent A.I. called the Thunderhead. There is no social or economic inequality, and mankind has even managed to conquer death itself. But with humanity no longer constrained by time, someone has to keep the population under control to avoid overcrowding the world and using up Earth's finite resources. Enter the Scythedom, an order of warriors whose sole purpose is to kill people for the long-term survival of humanity.

The series follows two teenagers, Rowan and Citra, who are chosen to become the apprentices of a high ranking Scythe. As they train for a job that neither of them actually wants, they come to realize that underneath the surface, their perfect world has some very deep flaws. With their every need taken care of by the Thunderhead, humanity has lost its drive to improve and simply does things to avoid boredom rather than out of any enjoyment, while younger generations of Scythes begin developing delusions of godhood and enjoy killing for its own sake. Citra and Rowan must learn the ins and outs of the Scythedom and train to become elite killing machines while also confronting the cracks in their utopia.

There are a total of four installments in the series.

• The first book, Scythe, was released in November 2016.
• The second book, Thunderhead, was released in January 2018.
• The third, The Toll, was released in November 2019.
• A fourth companion book, Gleanings, was released in November 2022. It is an anthology of short stories set in the universe, and serves as a prequel and sequel to the original trilogy.

A film adaptation is in the works at Amblin Entertainment, with the series' author stating Steven Spielberg is personally involved in an undisclosed capacity; however, the film's script has gone through no less than 3 sets of writers as of April 2023, and seems to be trapped in Development Hell.

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The series contains examples of:

• Absurdly Youthful Mother: Thanks to advances in medical technology and the fact that all humans are immortal from birth, anyone has the ability to "turn a corner" and have their physical age reset to look younger than they actually are.
• Adipose Rex: High Blade Xenocrates deliberately cultivates this image, keeping himself at an above-average weight to increase his presence.
• Age Without Youth: Downplayed, people physically age at a normal rate but can "turn the corner" and reset their bodies to a younger age. Scythe Alighieri has done this so many times that his body has been permanently affected by it and his face looks off; the skin is described as being TOO smooth, almost resembling plastic.
• A God I Am Not: The Thunderhead makes it quite clear that it is not a deity, and will not accept any worship of it. The Tonists do anyway, making it part of their "holy trinity".
• The Aloner: Due to the rushed launch, Sister Astrid winds up being the only living person on the ship to Kepler 186f, a journey estimated to take 1683 years. She makes her peace with it, and the future segments of "Testament of the Toll" indicate she did survive to become the mother of her people.
• Anti-Hero: Rowan becomes one after his experience serving as an apprentice to Scythe Goddard, killing several Scythes and being more ruthless than the other heroes.
• Apologetic Attacker: Rowan and Citra when they're forced to fight each other at the second Conclave. Also Citra when she accidentally shoots Scythe Faraday in the leg.
• Arch-Enemy: Goddard and Rowan. While Goddard's actions earn him the ire of many of the heroes, he has limited interaction with most of them aside from Rowan. Rowan hates Goddard for the abusive training he put him through, and was inspired to hunt down and kill Scythes who are evil because of Goddard. The hate becomes mutual after Rowan decapitated Goddard, who sought to get revenge by torturing Rowan before executing him publicly. This is emphasized by their constant verbal sparring where Rowan manages to get under Goddard's skin more than any other character does.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Scythe Brahms, Curate Mendoza, and Scythe Goddard are killed (in the earlier case indirectly) by Scythe Rand in brutal ways, but they are the most vile characters in the trilogy.
  • Discussed excessively by scythes in regards to the morality of killing bad people, and used by others to rationalize brutal killings after the fact. The Mile High gleaning in particular has pro-Goddard factions claiming that people eager to watch a Public Execution deserved what they got, even though they were the ones cheering on Rowan's death moments earlier.
• The Atoner: Scythe Alighieri is an odd example, he doesn't feel bad about destroying the New Hope Colony but he does feel bad about not giving immunity to the families of those who died.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Anybody who isn't gleaned or killed in space or by fire or acid can be easily resurrected, to the point that some people kill themselves on purpose for the thrill of it, knowing they'll simply be brought back.
  • A more traditional example occurs in the first book when it is revealed Scythe Faraday didn't actually kill himself, but faked his suicide in an attempt to free Citra and Rowan from their apprenticeships.
  • It also happens in the second book with Scythe Goddard, whose severed head was preserved until Scythe Rand could have it grafted onto the body of Rowan's friend Tyger. The third book has Goddard killed and then revived with Tyger's memories, effectively bringing him back to life.
  • The final chapter of Gleanings has Scythe Curie being revived as one of the colonists meant to live on other planets.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: An odd example; Rowan is more than willing to kill Goddard and his cronies but he doesn't get the opportunity after the first book. In the end Scythe Rand is the one to kill Scythe Goddard, Scythe Brahms (by tricking Goddard into killing him), and Curate Mendoza for various reasons.
• The Beastmaster: All life on Earth is controlled by Thunderhead nanites, save for the life around Endura which is instead controlled by scythedom nanites. The Thunderhead mostly does it to avoid roadkill, while the scythedom uses it for ambience. In the climax of Thunderhead, Goddard hacks all the sea life to make them attack the island, leading a group of sharks to devour the Grandslayers, and in The Toll, the Thunderhead provides a signal by having birds flock to a specific person.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Rowan and Citra were adversarial even before they were put to Rand's "contest" due to their similar values but clashing opinions on how to be a Scythe. They are attracted to each other, but are both resolved to not let it grow, which just makes the feelings stronger.
• Benevolent A.I.: The Thunderhead oversees the perfect world and makes sure that everyone is safe and comfortable and is unable to harm people.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: At the end of the second book, Scythe Curie and the remaining Scythes on Endura self-glean rather than drown or be killed by sharks as the artificial island sinks into the Atlantic.
• Big Bad:
  • Scythe Goddard in Scythe, the Ax-Crazy scythe who goes on mass killing sprees for the sheer pleasure of it, and tries to make the entire Scythedom follow his views.
  • In Thunderhead, Goddard is set up as the Big Bad of the entire trilogy, when Rand brings him back from the dead, and he proceeds to murder the Scythedom's global leadership.
• Big Good: Scythe's Faraday and Curie could be considered this for the Scythedom as a whole since they're the biggest threats to Goddard's power. The Thunderhead is this for the entire series, being dedicated to protecting humanity at all costs and come the 2nd and 3rd books, it's actively working to curtail Goddard's plans.
• Bilingual Bonus: "Terra nova" is Portuguese for "new ground". Citra Terranova tries to rebuild the Scythedom from a new ground.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Curate Mendoza initially seems to be a genuinely friendly and helpful Tone Cultist, protecting Greyson and connecting with him over the fact that they are both pretending to be true believers of the Cult's beliefs. Come The Toll though and he's quickly consumed with a desire to use Greyson's influence over all Tone Cults to make himself more influential and starts taking more and more underhanded steps to gain power.
• Bittersweet Ending: In Scythe we get a mostly sweet one. Citra is a scythe, Rowan escapes with Faraday, and Goddard is dead, but Rowan is now a fugitive who kills cruel scythes, Citra has a bad reputation due to the events surrounding her apprenticeship, and many people who believe in Godard's views are still in the scythedom.
• Body Snatcher: Scythe Goddard's head is attached to Tyger Salazar's body in order to bring Goddard back to life.
• Bookends: Gleanings begins with Scythe Curie's first major act as a Scythe and ends with her beginning a new life as a normal person.
• Brain in a Jar: Scythe Goddard's head was preserved in between books, and is later grafted onto a living body to bring him back to life.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Scythe Rand proves to be far more capable and dangerous than her carefree and impulsive personality would let on. When she applies herself, she proves to be the most competent of all of the villains in the books, as evidenced by her intricate scheme in Thunderhead.
• Bystander Syndrome: In full effect with Scythes. Even without the strong societal taboos, Rand acknowledges the biggest factor against everyone resisting the Scythes is that the quotas are so small and so distant that it's always something happening to "someone else". Even mass gleanings do not provoke public outcry. This finally breaks in The Toll with the Mile High gleaning, as roughly thirty thousand people and their families are all killed, ensuring that just about everyone knows someone who knows someone who was there.
• Cannot Kill Their Loved Ones: At the end of Scythe, it's revealed that the final test before becoming an official Scythe is being forced to kill a relative. The reasoning is that it will weed out the apprentices who don't have the resolve to kill a loved one. Of course, since it's a futuristic society where humanity has all but conquered death, the victims will be revived within a few days. Rowan is made to temporarily kill his mother and Citra her younger brother, while two other apprentices are said to have been unable to go through with it.
• Character Tics: In The Toll Goddard develops a habit of cracking his knuckles which apparently was a tic of Tyger's,
• The Charmer: Scythe Goddard's greatest skill is his ability to charm others into liking him and agreeing with his views.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The hibernation salesman and Goddard's first victim in the story in Scythe turns out to be important in The Toll, as the Thunderhead adds it to the ever-increasing proof that Goddard has been sabotaging space travel.
• The Chessmaster:
  • Scythe Goddard is a very sadistic one, creating plans that hurt others largely for his own enjoyment or advancement.
  • Scythe Rand becomes this in the second book, manipulating events from the shadows in order to make Goddard High Blade of Mid Merica.
  • The Thunderhead proves to be this in the third book, using subtle clues to lead characters to where it wants them and organizing the establishment of several off-world colonies.
• City on the Water: The Island of the Enduring Heart (Endura for short). In addition to being the headquarters of the World Scythe Council, it also serves as a historical attraction for tourists and a refuge for Scythes' families. Goddard sinks it at the end of the second book.
• Co-Dragons:
  • In the first book, Scythes Volta, Rand, and Chomsky are this to Goddard, though Volta isn't as loyal as the other two.
  • In the second book, Scythe Brahms steps up to this role along with Rand, who is revealed to have survived Rowan's betrayal at the end of the first book. After Goddard kills Brahms in a fit of rage, Rand is left as Goddard's last lieutenant.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Xenocrates threatens Citra with tor-turé, to get more information out of her. Ultimately subverted as he doesn't go through with it.
• Cool People Rebel Against Authority: Parodied with the "unsavouries", people who decide to defy the Thunderhead's will not because of any moral stance, but simply because they want to defy any form of authority. They essentially act like tantrum-throwing children convinced they're bad because they annoy people and break things that are easily replaced or because they frequent clubs the Thunderhead has designed for them, and very few unsavouries do things that are actually dangerous.
• The Cowl: Rowan takes on a lot of traits and tropes from this archetype when he becomes Scythe Lucifer. Citra as Scythe Anastasia is arguably The Cape to his Cowl, but she exhibits far fewer obvious comparisons with that trope.
• Cult: The Tonists are people who believe in a "Great Vibration" that flows through the world, the second and third books expand on them, showing the different sects and how they practice their faith.
• Darkest Hour: The ending of the second book. Goddard has assassinated the global Scythe leadership, seizing the position of High Blade of MidMerica. Scythe Curie and several high-ranking scythes are permanently dead, along with thousands of innocent civilians. Citra and Rowan are trapped in an airtight vault two miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. And the Thunderhead, furious with the politics of the Scythedom, has distanced itself from humanity in the hopes that the human race can learn to accept the consequences of their actions without having it there to solve all of their problems for them.
• Decadent Court: The Scythe Conclaves are full of these, with lots of power plays happening behind the scenes.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Rowan eventually becomes this, mostly around Scythe Goddard who goes from his normal serious self to snarking right back.
  • High Blade Xenocrates is very sarcastic towards everyone under him.
  • Scythe Rand is very sarcastic and is the only person who can talk back to Goddard through her snark.
  • Greyson isn't above this when he's in a bad mood, and even when he's being outwardly polite, his internal dialogue is full of wit and venom.
• Death Is Cheap: One of the major elements of the story is that humans have achieved immortality, and anyone who experiences something that should kill them in real life is quickly resurrected at Revival Centers.
• Death of a Child: While children benefit from some element of (literal) Infant Immortality, they aren't immune to being gleaned.
  • Scythe Faraday breaks into tears at dinnertime after he gleaned a child.
  • Off-page, Scythe Volta massacres an entire classroom of Tonist children, which leads to his self-gleaning.
  • Citra's final scythe test? To "glean" her own younger brother. He ends up being resurrected immediately after the test, but the moment plays the trope straight.
• Developer's Foresight: An in-universe example. Greyson learns that the clubs that Unsavories frequent are designed by the Thunderhead to provide an outlet: the Unsavories get to beat people up without consequences, and masochists who enjoy getting beat up can get curb-stomped all they want.
• Deus est Machina: The Thunderhead is functionally a god, being able to care for literally billions of people simultaneously. However, it also explicitly does NOT want to be worshiped like one.
• Died Happily Ever After:
  • One man Faraday killed was a master fencer; Faraday challenged him to a duel and was killed several times before winning. The man thanked Faraday for letting him die fighting.
  • Similarly, most of Citra's gleaning subjects have this because she lets them choose their deaths. The most prominent example of this was an actor who wanted to be gleaned onstage during a production of Julius Ceasar in which he played Ceasar. Despite a brief cringe when Citra broke character and called him out by his real name per scythe tradition, he seemed very pleased with his end, even going as far as to wink at Citra when she came onstage.
• Disney Death:
  • In Scythe, despite seemingly dying about halfway through the story, Scythe Faraday turns up alive near the end and is revealed to have faked his death.
  • In Thunderhead, Scythes Goddard and Rand are both revealed to have survived being apparently burned to death after Rowan betrayed Goddard's cabal at the end of the first book.
• Disney Villain Death: Tyger, Rowan's friend, invoked several of these to make his family pay attention to him. Later on in the first book, Citra invokes this to escape Xenocrates. In fact, people do this so often that there's a word for it— "splatting".
• The Dog Bites Back: As an intitation, Scythe Goddard leaves the Tonist curate as a monastery's sole survivor so that Rowan can glean the last person. Rowan decides he has had enough of Goddard's cruelty and abuse, and instead beheads Goddard and burns the rest of his squad.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Arc of a Scythe" refers to both the arched shape of a scythe's blade and the developmental arcs the scythedom must go through.
• Downer Ending: The second book; Scythe Curie, the World Scythe Counsel, and everybody on the island of Endura are dead, Citra and Rowan are trapped at the bottom of the ocean, Goddard has ensured his position as High Blade of Mid-Merica. On top of that the Thunderhead has marked everybody on earth except Grayson as Unsavory, cutting off communication with all of them.
• The Dreaded: All Scythes are feared and avoided by everybody, but Scythe Curie in particular has cultivated this reputation over the years, earning herself the nickname "Grand Dame of Death".
• Driven to Suicide:
  • While non-scythes have emotional nanites that eliminate suicidal thoughts, the demands of the job lead some Scythes to self glean. Most notably, the entire first generation of Scythes killed themselves. It's also the only way a Scythe's death is ever permanent, as they are otherwise revived like anyone else.
  • In the first book, Scythe Faraday seems to end his life by throwing himself in front of a train, in order to free Rowan and Citra from having to glean the other. Turns out he was Faking the Dead.
  • Also in the first book, Scythe Volta succumbs under the pressures of mass gleaning after wiping out a classroom of children. Afterward, he slits his wrists. Rowan's fire incidentally hides Volta's true intentions.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Goddard and his disciples. Instead of treating death as a solemn occasion like Faraday, or as an act of mercy, like Curie, Goddard revels in his ability to control who lives and who dies.
• Dumb Muscle:
  • Scythe Chomsky at least according to Volta.
  • Rowan's friend Tyger becomes one in the second book when he begins training with Scythe Rand.
  • Scythe Morrison is definitely written as such, though he's more unaware than straight-up dumb.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Greyson's subplot in the second book. After being Un-personed and branded an Unsavory to fullfill his role as the Thunderhead's proxy, his designation is lifted and un-personing reversed at the end of the book while every other human on the planet is designated Unsavory.
• Empathic Environment: Due to having control of the weather in most circumstances and places, the Thunderhead can invoke this at-will. It most-notably does it in the third book after Greyson decides to sever his connection to the Thunderhead, declaring it "unsavory" to him. The Thunderhead accepts this, but still expresses its deep sorrow by making it rain almost everywhere.
• End of an Era: At the end of the series, all of the scythe diamonds break, releasing ten nanite diseases that will wipe out 5% of the population every 20 years, eliminating the need for scythes. Scythe Faraday and others decide to use their skills to give a Mercy Kill to those already suffering.
• Evil Is Petty: Goddard to a certain degree, him making it so that Rowan and Citra's apprenticeship will end with one gleaning the other doesn't seem to be for any other reason than he wanted to hurt Faraday and he'll enjoy it.
• Everyone Has Standards: When Citra points out that Goddard grafting his head onto Tyger's body and returning to the Scythedom like nothing happened is a violation of Scythe policy, the Grandslayers unanimously vote to disqualify Goddard from becoming MidMerican High Blade and make him repeat his apprenticeship in order to remain a Scythe.
• Everything is Big in Texas: The Thunderhead runs a number of "Charter Regions" with social experiments, such as making employment illegal in Nepal or requesting that the inhabitants of Tasmania all choose one biological alteration. Texas is the Charter Region where it practices "benevolent anarchy" with very few rules, and as such many of the inhabitants like to play up Texan stereotypes of being rough, gun-toting rebels. Notably after the Time Skip when Goddard has already taken over most of North Merica and declared himself Overblade, Texas remains the lone holdout.
• Evil Gloating: Goddard is very fond of this, most notably when he sinks Endura, he pretends to save the Grandslayers and instead ditches them just so he can see the look on their faces as they die.
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • Most of the victims Citra kills as Scythe Anastasia react this way. While some Scythes call Anastasia out on this, the targets seem to generally appreciate this concession.
  • In Thunderhead, Xenocrates drowns himself rather than let himself be eaten by sharks as a last act of defiance against Goddard.
  • At the end of Thunderhead, Curie and the remaining Scythes in the Founders' Tower are calm and compassionate as they Mercy Kill the people around them when Endura sinks, and are just as calm when gleaning themselves. The non-scythes realize what's happening and accept their fate, thanking the scythes as they die.
  Curie: Are we rats, or are we scythes?
• Fake Defector: Greyson Tolliver. When he's marked as an Unsavory for saving Curie and Anastasia, the Thunderhead, through Agent Traxler, uses him as a proxy to root out who is responsible for the attempts on the two Scythes' lives.
• Faking the Dead:
  • Scythe Faraday fakes his own self Gleaning in a failed attempt to save Rowan and Citra from their apprenticeship.
  • When Goddard orders Scythe Morrison to glean the Toll, Greyson recruits Morrison to guard him from future attacks, and pretends that one of the people gleaned during Morrison's attack was the Toll.
• Fantastically Indifferent: Since nobody can permanently die unless gleaned by Scythes, society as a whole is desensitized to things like car crashes and people throwing themselves off buildings.
• Fire Keeps It Dead: Burning is one of the few causes of death that can't be reversed.
• Five-Token Band: Goddard surrounds himself with Scythes of various ethnicities, possibly invoked as a way to make him stand out more.
• Foreshadowing: When discussing the children's rhyme about the Land of Nod and how it may be a clue to the Founding Scythes' backup, Rowan compares it to "Ring around the Rosie" being a metaphor for the Black Plague. turns out the backup is also a kind of plague.
• The Fundamentalist: Tonists are mostly pacifists whose worst qualities are being a bit annoying about spreading word of the Tone. Sibilants, on the other hand, are extremist sects of Tonists and are prone to taking the words of the Toll completely out of context just so they can be extreme about it. One example is Greyson saying "Your voices are music to my ears.", which they take as a sign that all other music must be destroyed and go an instrument-breaking crusade. A group of them are responsible for killing High Blade Tenkamenin.
• Gender Bender: The Madagascar Charter Region is one where people are raised without genders until they choose one when coming of age, and many choose fluidity rather than one or the other. Captain Jerico, the most prominent Madagascan character, is a woman under the sun and stars and a man under clouds, and finds others' confusion at the concept very amusing.
• A God Am I:
  • Goddard and his followers believe that Scythes are gods and should be treated as such.
  • Several of the beta Cirri the Thunderhead makes have this mindset, such as saying that they'll have humanity worship it or that it's all powerful and can do whatever it wants.
• Good is Not Nice: Scythes do the public a legitimate service by thinning population numbers to avoid overpopulation issues. Despite this, many of them range from being arrogant and entitled, believing their service to the world puts them above other people, to blatantly sadistic and Ax-Crazy, believing it's their birthright to kill. Anastasia is one of the few who actually goes out of her way to make her gleaning targets' deaths as comfortable/fulfilling for the victim as possible, taking her mentor Faraday's philosophy (which was fair and merciful but still rather cold) even further.
• Good Is Not Soft: The Scythes, what they do is a necessary public service and many are humane about it but they do still kill people.
• Gilded Cage: Esme lives in a mansion and is treated well by everybody there, but she is unwittingly being used as a hostage by Goddard to keep Xenocrates in his pocket.
• The Handler: Agent Traxler is Greyson's handler. His gleaning is a sign that Greyson will have to finish his mission on his own.
• Hate Sink:
  • Among the New Order Scythes introduced in Thunderhead, Scythe Brahms is the most unlikable. He's a slimy, lazy, cowardly Scythe who kidnaps and psychologically tortures his gleaning targets by playing Brahms' Lullaby before gleaning them. When Rowan targets him and tries to force him to change his ways he instead goes on to be worse. He throws his lot in with Scythe Rand and aids her in her plan to try and kill Scythes Anastasia and Curie in order to make Goddard the MidMerican High Blade. He gleans Rowan's father, forcing his whole family to listen to the Lullaby and it's clear that he will continue to glean his family. He lures Rowan into a trap so Rand and Goddard can get their revenge on him by executing him in front of the World Scythe Counsel. This is all in tandem with him being a Jerkass who lets his dog crap on his neighbor's lawn and tries to solicit Rand for sex under the pretense of comforting her over Goddard rejecting her advances.
  • Scythe Goddard slowly devolves into this as he commits more and more atrocities under the hypocritical guise of helping the Scythedom. His revival and rise to Overblade of North Merica only make him less likable, loosing the charm he had in the first book and making him even more smug, petty, and cruel. His backstory doesn't make things any better, he murdered his parents and destroyed two space colonies because they made the Scythedom useless and he wanted power within the Scythedom.
  • Curate Mendoza becomes this in The Toll where the narration emphasizes how much of an underhanded, power hungry, jerk he is. Uniquely unlike several other characters who the narration paints in a bad light, he never gets to show off any Hidden Depths or likable traits and instead becomes worse with the reveal that he's behind the attack on Port Remembrance.
• The Hedonist: Scythe Goddard. Combine this with his job and it becomes particularly dangerous. Scythes are not supposed to enjoy their work (at least according to the Old Guard), but Goddard reasons that he should be allowed to enjoy what he does.
• Hidden Depths: Scythe Brahms mostly comes off as a slimy sadist who's only a New Order Scythe because of his sadism, however Rand says that he cried Tears of Joy upon learning that she was still alive and that she saved Goddard's head, implying that he genuinely belives in Goddard's philosophy.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the third book, Scythe Morrison is recruited by Goddard to glean the Toll/Greyson, however, after Greyson spares his life he becomes his bodyguard.
• Heroic BSoD: Greyson completely shuts down after Verity's gleaning, and his becoming wanted by the Scythedom for attacking Scythe Constantine (and being blamed for the various attacks on Scythes Anastasia and Curie). Understandable, as this also comes after having his life essentially erased, being branded unsavory (which cuts him off from the Thunderhead, who he essentially sees as a confidante and parent figure), having several heinous crimes attributed to him, and being forced to hide amongst a Tone Cult. He snaps out of it when the Thunderhead returns his identity to normal and contacts him at the end of the second book.
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of the second book Scythe Curie leads Citra and Rowan into the vault of Scythe relics to survive Endura's sinking, but she has to be outside the vault to close it, leading to her death.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the first book, Chomsky's preference for using fire ends up backfiring when Rowan kills him and the rest of Goddard's group and the fire he started ends up preventing them from being revived.
• Hope Springs Eternal: The final chapter of the second book. Despite Goddard's victory at Endura, Citra and Rowan can be revived. Scythe Faraday and Munira are on their way to the Land of Nod to investigate a failsafe built by the founding Scythes. And after spending the entire book as an Un-person and Fake Defector on its behalf, the Thunderhead rewards Greyson's perseverance and loyalty by ensuring that he is the only human on Earth not marked as an Unsavory.
• How Would You Like to Die?: Scythe Anastasia is distinct among scythes for letting her targets choose what form of death they'd prefer, injecting them with a remote-triggered poison to ensure they don't escape but also giving them a month to decide and to put their affairs in order. Some prefer to quietly let the poison take them, but others prefer a Glorious Death: one man dresses up as James Bond to gamble and then drinks a poisoned martini, another asks to be hunted with a crossbow with two years of immunity for his family if he survives til morning (he doesn't, but she grants it anyway), and a central scene of Thunderhead is an actor who played Julius Caesar deciding he wants to be gleaned in Caesar's death scene.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: At the end of the first book, Rowan becomes one, going around hunting those who agree with Goddard's views or who are otherwise corrupt Scythes.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: The more we see of them the more clear it becomes that Scythe Rand is this to Scythe Goddard. She's the reason he ever had a chance of becoming High Blade, and after that is the voice of reason compared to Goddard's increasing insanity and paranoia.
• Hypocrite:
  • Xenocrates lives in a log cabin to seem more humble, but the cabin is also perched atop the tallest building in Fulcrum City, flaunting his power as a scythe. This is lampshaded by Goddard.
  • Goddard himself has a few moments of Hypocrisy. He claims that his Gleanings are a "gift" to his victims, but also calls himself "generous" for giving out mass immunity. He calls out Rowan for killing Chomsky and trying to kill him and Rand but also kills the World Scythe Counsel and all of the Scythes on Endura. The third book has him claiming that his actions are for the betterment of the Scythedom but Rand points out that he's really just trying to gain more personal power, and is willing to kill anyone, Scythe or not, who gets in his way.
• I Have Your Wife: High Blade Xenocrates secretly broke the rules and fathered a child, and Goddard holds his secret daughter hostage to ensure his cooperation.
• I Meant to Do That: Used to horrific effect in The Toll. When Rowan's unexpectedly rescued from his Public Execution, Rand tells Goddard to pretend he intended not to execute Rowan as a lesson to the public on glorifying in death. Goddard rolls with it...then decides to make it authentic by gleaning the 30,000 people who came to watch.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: Outside gleaning and the occasional fire, all other potential causes of death simply renders a person deadish, until they are healed back to full health at a survival center. Several characters end up deadish throughout the series.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: Averted. Despite the lack of non-gleaning deaths, people keep on having children, sometimes having tens of them past age one hundred. Even at the end of Scythe, the Earth has yet to find a way to balance the birth and death rate. The end of The Toll solves it with nanite diseases that will kill a random 5% of the population every 20 years.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Scythe Curie's preferred method of gleaning is stabbing a person's heart.
  • At the end of the first book, Rowan impales Goddard before decapitating him.
• Interim Villain: In Thunderhead after Rand is revealed to be alive, it seems like Scythe Brahms will be taking the role of antagonist until her public resurgence. This is Subverted when it is revealed that he is actually working for Rand.
• Internal Reformist: Scythe Faraday and Scythe Curie both try to keep the Scythedom on the straight and narrow.
• In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race:
  • Humanity has progressed to a point where nearly everyone is a mixture of ethnicities, with genetic indexes keeping track of the percentages. Scythe Goddard nevertheless surrounds himself with scythes of distinct phenotypes, and scythe society makes sure that it gleans an even number of each race.
  • Subverted in the case of the Permafrost people, who live near the Arctic and have stuck to themselves long enough to maintain their own ethnicity, even though it's not one of the standard genetic indexes. This allows an unscrupulous scythe to carry out his own ethnic cleansing before Rowan catches up with him.
• I Will Wait for You:
  • After Citra is killed during Goddard's attempt to stop the Thunderhead's spaceships, and Cirrus is unable to revive her before the ship reaches its destination, Rowan decides not to kill himself in order to wait for the ship to land and instead waits 117 years for her to be revived.
  • A non romantic version, Sister Astrid waits 1683 years with only Cirrus as company in order to ensure that the Tone Cultists are able to establish their space colony.
• It Never Gets Any Easier: After the first time Rowan is required to choose a subject for gleaning, he asks Faraday if it ever gets easier, to which Faraday responds, "I certainly hope not."
• Jabba Table Manners: Chomsky wolfs down food quickly and messily.
• Jerkass: At the end of the day, this is what Goddard ultimately is, he's spiteful, petty, cruel, and beneath his mask of charm, lies a rude, egotistical monster.
• Kangaroo Court: Citra is put through one when High Blade Xenocrates accuses her of murdering Scythe Faraday.
• Karma Houdini:
  • By the end of the third book, Scythe Rand is completely unpunished for the crimes she commits and is actually rewarded by being reunited with Tyger.
  • Scythe Alighieri is left unpunished for his hand in the destruction of the New Hope Colony.
• Karmic Death:
  • In the second book, Scythe Brahms, a slimy coward who acted as a proxy for Rand's schemes just so he could get revenge on Rowan, is killed when Rand manipulated Goddard into killing him by framing him for Rowan's escape as revenge for Brahm's soliciting Rand for sex.
  • In the third book, Goddard himself, a massively egotistical Attention Whore with a desire for power over the Scythedom, is ultimately done in when his followers abandon him and his second in command kills him in order to boost her own reputation. He is then dismissed as one of the many victims of the plagues that replaced the Scythes, his reputation in shambles.
• Kick the Dog: Goddard forced a man to give up his job and house, gleaned his pool boy randomly, and forced the homeowner to take the pool boy's place.
• Kill It with Fire: Scythe Chomsky's preferred method of gleaning. In the setting's post-mortal society, death by fire is one of the few things from which one cannot be brought back, though that hardly concerns a scythe since their kills are permanent anyway. Later, Rowan does this to Goddard and his followers. It becomes his signature method as Scythe Lucifer. After this, the mainstream Scythes defy this by banning gleaning by fire.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • The climax of Rowan's arc in the first book results in the deaths of Goddard, Volta, Chomsky, and Rand. Although in the second book, Goddard and Rand are revealed to have survived.
  • The second book kills off Tyger, Curie, Xenocrates, the entire World Scythe Council, and everyone on Endura save for Rowan and Citra. Tyger and Curie are "resurrected" in The Toll and Gleanings respectively, by having backups of their consciousnesses put into proxy bodies.
  • The third book kills Tenkamenin, Curate Mendoza, and Goddard, but brings Tyger back....or at least the memory backup of him that was stored in the Thunderhead.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the third book, Curate Mendoza, a power hungry Tonist who manipulates and eventually betrays the Tone Cults in an attempt at getting more power, ultimately just sets himself up as a wet works operator for Goddard with little real authority and is completely powerless to stop Rand from killing Goddard and crashing his plane with Mendoza inside.
• Last Episode, New Character: Captain Jerico Soberanis, Loriana Barchok, Sister Astrid and Cirrus are introduced in the last book despite being major characters.
• Light Is Good: Scythe Faraday wears an ivory cloak, and is one of the most moral scythes around. And in fact, this is why black is the only cloak-color that is shunned by the Scythedom: because they are supposed to represent light in every spectrum, not darkness. Subverted with Rowan, who takes a black robe as Scythe Lucifer, to indicate he works outside the Scythedom, and to highlight their hypocrisy.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: Deconstructed. Life may go on forever and you can be revived as long as you aren't marked by a Scythe for gleaning, but humans have begun to lose their drive to create and do things, simply going through the motions of life to stave off boredom rather than out of any passion for a particular activity.
• Logic Bomb: Downplayed. The Thunderhead learning about a part of the world it is not allowed to think about stresses it immensely as a flaw in its design means that all of it could be compromised. It doesn't destroy itself, but it does declare everyone an unsavory and stops talking to humanity in the third book while it figures out what to do next.
• Loophole Abuse: Used by Scythe Curie, Citra, Goddard, and The Thunderhead at various points, with Goddard using the limit of scythe rules to abuse his power and the other three using the other limit to stop him.
• Loss of Identity: Part of becoming a Scythe is casting off your original identity and thinking of yourself in terms of your persona.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • Citra suspects that Scythe Faraday was murdered and his death was made to look like a suicide. Turns out he's actually Faking the Dead.
  • Near the end of the first book, Rowan makes the deaths of Goddard and his crew look like they couldn't get out of the building before it burned down.
  • A non-lethal variation occurs at the very end of the first book. To avoid being forced to kill Rowan, Citra punches him in the face to give herself plausible deniability when hitting him with her ring hand grants him immunity from gleaning for a year, then helps him escape while the Conclave debates what to do with him until his immunity runs out.
• May–December Romance: Implied/zig-zagged in the ending of The Toll. Citra is revived in her 18-year-old body on Trappist-1e, and while Rowan "turns a corner" to match that appearance, he's lived 117 years longer than her on the space vessel that brought them to the planet, meaning he's actually 135 when they reunite and get together.
• May It Never Happen Again: At the end of the third book Scythe Faraday activates the failsafe the original Scythes created in case the system got out of hand. The failsafe is a disease which kills random people at regular intervals and it also removes the Scythes' ability to kill people. The series was caused by the Scythedom becoming filled with sadists twisting its ideals so removing their power keeps this from ever becoming a problem again.
• Meaningful Name: "Terra nova" is Portuguese for "new ground". Citra Terranova tries to rebuild the Scythedom from a new ground.
• The Mentor: Faraday for Rowan and Citra, he is later replaced by Scythe Curie for Citra and Goddard for Rowan.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard:
  • In the first book, Scythe Faraday appears to suffer this trope, until he turns up alive in the last third of the book.
  • In the second book, played tragically straight with Scythe Curie. After making sure that Citra and Rowan will survive, she self-gleans rather than drown or be devoured by sharks as the floating city of Endura sinks into the ocean.
• Mercy Kill:
  • At the end of the second book. Curie and the remaining Scythes on Endura glean the non-scythes to spare them the pain of drowning or being killed by carnivorous sealife.
  • At the end of the third book, this has become (some) Scythes' new role after the fall of the Scythedom. The nanite diseases select people at random, but Scythes use their skills to give them a quick, painless death and to comfort the family after the fact.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: A rather literal example occurs in the second book After having his head grafted onto the body of Rowan's friend Tyger, Scythe Goddard finds Tyger's original temperament and personality subtly influencing him.
• Murder, Inc.: The Scythedom are technically this, but they serve as population control so they are portrayed heroically.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Citra has this reaction when she accidentally shoots Scythe Faraday. In fairness, she didn't realize her mentor had been faking his death and assumed that she was ambushing his killer, rather the man himself.
  • Volta has this reaction to all of the mass gleanings he participates in. Later when he gleans an entire room of children it proves to be too much and he is Driven to Suicide.
• Named After Somebody Famous: All Scythes select the name of a famous historical figure as an alias upon becoming ordained as a Scythe. Notable examples include Marie Curie, Michael Faraday, Volta, Robert Goddard, Nelson Mandella, and Anastasia Romanov.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Grande Dame of Death, and Scythe Lucifer. Neither of these people are actually evil, but they do both have impressive kill counts.
• Necessary Evil: The Scythes kill civilians in order to keep humans from overpopulating the planet.
• Neck Snap: At the Harvest Conclave test, Rowan snaps Citra's neck to render her deadish. His illegal move results in her loss and his disqualification, ensuring that their tie remains.
• Never My Fault: Goddard runs around mass gleaning, torturing, and creating enemies, but whenever it rebounds on him he finds someone else to blame. In the third book, he somehow manages to blame the old-guard scythes for the pushback against his regime. Later he claims that the Tonist resistance is just them being stubborn for no reason, not even considering that his order to glean their prophet was what provoked them.
• New Era Speech: Goddard is fond of these. He gives a particularly grandiose one in the third book at Rowan's public execution, although Rowan's escape forces him to turn it into a large-scale "The Reason You Suck" Speech on the fly.
• New Neo City: The Thunderhead likes to rename cities under its rule, so St.Louis is now Fulcrum City. Inverted in the case of New York City, as the Thunderhead renamed it to Lenape City.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Chomsky's fondness for the flamethrower allows Rowan a tidy means to permanently kill Goddard's depraved circle and destroy the evidence.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Rowan decides to spare Scythe Brahms hoping he would be scared into fiving up his evil ways. Instead Brahms joins Rand's scheme to make Goddard High Blade and gleans Rowan's father to lure him into a trap.
• No Kill like Overkill: Goddard's assassination of the World Scythe Council at the end of the second book. Using his own engineers and programmers, he hacked the systems keeping Endura afloat to cripple the floating city long enough to kill the Grandslayers with a shark attack. He ends up sinking the entire island.
• No OSHA Compliance: A key part of the second book's climax. The scythes have no fear of mortality, and so when repeated malfunctions on Endura keep piling up they just add it to the docket and even disable a few emergency systems for being too annoying. This allows Scythe Goddard to hack the system and cause a cascading chain of disasters, and the entire island sinks with nearly all hands on board.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: Played With. The Scythe Conclave does get some things done but Xenocrates normally ignores most things that pertain to the main characters due to time.
• Oblivious to Love: Scythe Faraday was clueless to the fact that Curie was in love with him while she was his apprentice. He thought she wanted to kill him. Once they were both older and wiser, he finally recognized her attempts at flirting for what they were and started a relationship in secret.
• Official Couple: Citra and Rowan show signs of being this, but because Scythes are forbidden from romantic attachment, nothing comes of it in the first book. After they go off to a different planet to help establish a colony they officially hook up due to not being Scythes any more.
• Off with His Head!: Scythe Goddard is gleaned when Rowan decapitates him with a samurai sword.
• The Older Immortal: All of humanity is immortal now, except in the off-chance that they're gleaned or die by fire, so some people are centuries old.
• Older Than They Look: With the option to "turn the corner" and reset their body to a younger state, people rarely look the age they actually are.
• One World Order: All governments are under the control of the Thunderhead.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: After the Thunderhead became a thing and immortality was granted, most religions died out without the need for an afterlife, with the Tonists becoming the only major world religion. Of course, there's a degree of deconstruction around this, as many people aren't ready to cope with death on their own, show pseudo-religious fervor over the Thunderhead, and struggle with morality without any pre-existing set of ethics.
• Outside Man, Inside Man: Rowan is the outside man and Citra is the inside woman to the Scythedom in Thunderhead.
  • Could be taken further, as Greyson is also an Outside Man, possible even further outside than Rowan by virtue of having no insight into the Scythedom's politics or proceedings.
• The Paranoiac: Scythe Goddard devolves into this after becoming High Blade. He's suspicious of most people around him, to the point of installing cannons in his home, he becomes a much bigger Jerkass than he was before, and this is on top of his already inflated ego.
• Parental Abandonment: Due to his constant "splatting", Tyger was legally made a ward of the Thunderhead by his parents.
• Parental Neglect:
  • The reason Rowan decided to take up Scythe Faraday's offer of an apprenticeship is because his family avoids him and often acts like he isn't there, leaving him feeling overlooked and ignored.
  • Greyson Tolliver's parents liked the idea of families more than actually raising them, so they were largely absent from his life after a certain point.
• Parental Substitute: The Thunderhead did more to raise Greyson than his own parents. Being branded as an Unsavory in order to help the Thunderhead subvert the loopholes of its programming hits him hard because it means he can no longer talk to it.
• Powerful and Helpless: The Thunderhead in any matters where Scythes are involved. It can change the weather, overload the entire world with alarms and feedback in an expression of rage, and it can switch the power on or off; the Thunderhead itself acknowledges that it is godlike... but it cannot directly interfere with Scythe activities. That said, it's a little downplayed thanks to a little Loophole Abuse here and there.
• The Philosopher:
  • Scythe Curie has quite a lot of philosophy regarding the world in her gleaning journal.
  • The Thunderhead as well. It spends a large portion of the second book thinking about its own nature, its limitations, and its purpose in the world.
• Psychopomp: Scythes attempt to invoke this in-universe, as they all dress in cloaks similar to grim reapers. That said, it's a taboo to actually dress in black.
• Public Execution: The Toll has two: first Rowan's attempted execution complete with a long tour and a giant pyre, then the gleaning of the entire crowd.
• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: Goddard was originally the student of High Blade Xenocrates.
  • Zigzagged; it's implied that the Moon colony genocide, easily Goddard's most heinous crime, might have had Xenocrates' involvement, approval, or commission. That being said, Goddard and Xenocrates have still soured to each other and essentially turned against one another by the time the events of first book occur.
• Pyromaniac: Chomsky is never seen without his flamethrower while out on gleaning, and refuses to part with it even when told to put it away.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Goddard's genocide in Endura gets him everything he wants and allows him to create some degree of anarchy to boot. However, the victory is spoiled by a number of factors; his revenge had to happen because the Grandslayers refused to make him High Blade in the first place, he's realizing that Tyger's mind has more control than is desired, and having a Hyper-Competent Sidekick is starting to suck because Scythe Rand is pointing out facets of his plan he hadn't even thought of in the first place. By the third book he's a paranoid recluse who can't trust anyone because very few people trust him and his cult of personality doesn't make him feel much better.
• Rage Breaking Point: The Tonist's long prophesized "Great Resonance" is in fact The Thunderhead's screams of impotent fury as it finally becomes fed up with the machinations of the Scythedom and cultural and creative decline of the human race, and it distances itself from everyone but Greyson.
• Raised as a Host: Tyger is recruited for an unofficial Scythe apprenticeship in the second book solely for the purpose of providing a new body for Scythe Goddard's still-living head.
• Really Gets Around: Scythe Rand apparently has so much sex that her journal is mostly just stories about her various sexual encounters.
• Red Baron: Scythe Curie is known as "The Grande Dame of Death". Rowan earns the moniker of "Scythe Lucifer" when he becomes a Hunter of His Own Kind.
• Resistance as Planned: The whole counter-culture of Unsavories was designed by the Thunderhead to provide humans who enjoy being rebellious and destructive with an outlet for their destructive impulses. Unlike most examples of this trope, the Unsavories are (mostly) aware of it.
• Rule-Abiding Rebel: The Unsavories, to an extent. The Thunderhead set up "Anachronistic Wish Fulfillment (AWFul) clubs, full of breakable things, actors who are paid to lose every fight and cry when bullied, and challenges that are mostly very easy to overwhelm so they can play the roles of rebels without actually doing harm.
• Sadist Teacher: Scythe Goddard is this to Rowan after Scythe Faraday's death.
• Sadistic Choice: Happens frequently. The most notable example is that, after the first Conclave, Rowan and Citra are informed that whichever one of them is ordained as a Scythe at the Winter Conclave will be required to glean the other as their first assignment.
• Second Episode Introduction: Greyson Tolliver, Scythe Morrison^note Debatable, as Morrison is technically mentioned in the first book in passing, but retconned/promoted to being important in the second book. He would lean closer to either Promoted to Meaningful Role or Remember the New Guy?, Curate Mendoza, Scythe Brahms and Munira Atrushi are all important characters who are introduced in the second book. Taken further with Jericho and Loriana, who are introduced in the initial chapters of third book, and Cirrus, an 11th-Hour Ranger in its purest form.
• Secret Test of Character: Curie and Faraday are fond of pulling these on Citra and Rowan.
  • All of Book 2 is essentially one of these for humanity from the Thunderhead. Humanity fails.
• Self-Made Orphan: Goddard destroyed the Mars colony where he grew up, killing everyone there including his parents.
• Shame If Something Happened: Goddard holds High Blade Xenocrates' secret illegitimate daughter hostage to ensure his cooperation, using both the threat to the girl's life and the threat of revealing Xenocrates' violation of the Scythe commandments to force the High Blade to support his controversial attitudes and actions.
• Shoot the Dog: The Thunderhead performs increasingly amoral actions to ensure that the launch goes as planned, including supplanting all the Tonists whose bodies were collected and possessing Jeri briefly to grasp the final component needed to make more of itself. While Greyson understands this, he nonetheless declares the Thunderhead "unsavoury" to him for it, saying that there must still be consequences for its actions.
• Shout-Out: The 35th chapter of Thunderhead is named "The 7-Percent Solution", which is the exact cocaine solution that Sherlock Holmes used to use. The 7-Percent solution of Thunderhead is different, however.
• Significant Name Shift: A narration version. Whether Citra is addressed as Citra or as Anastasia shifts in the narration as she identifies more with one or the other, usually being Citra in more vulnerable moments and Anastasia when she acts more scythe-like. She notes late in Thunderhead that she's finally started feeling like Anastasia and the narration stays that way until near the very end, when it reverts to "Citra" as she and Rowan wait to die in the Vault, unsure of what their future will be.
• The Singularity: The creation of Thunderhead and the gifts it gave to humanity served as a "soft" singularity. Post-mortal humans have a hard time comprehending what life must have been like for their predecessors.
• Sinister Minister: The third book shows that Curate Mendoza is far more power hungry and ruthless than he appears, and is willing to kill countless Scythes and innocents to gain power over the Tone Cultists.
• Slime Ball:
  • Scythe Brahms is described as such by Scythe Curie, who points out the Irony of him being ordained in the Year of the Slug. He's a cowardly New Order Scythe who's used by Scythe Rand to bring Goddard to power. He's also a massive dick who tried to exploit Rand's emotional vulnerability to have sex with her. It says a lot that he's the person Rand turned to to help with her plan.
  • Curate Mendoza proves to be this in the third book. He constantly tries to manipulate Greyson so that he has all of the power and doesn't even believe that strongly in the Tone Cultist religion. He proves to be this even more when he decides to kill High Blade Tenkamenin by sicing a violent Tone Cult on him which kills countless others and gladly allows the Cult's Curate to be killed, all on order to push Greyson to follow his advice more. Eventually his actions get him banished by Greyson and he immediately turns to Goddard in order to kill Geyson and take over the Cults.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Rowan's interactions with Rand and especially Goddard are non-stop snark fests with a lot of harsh jabs at each other.
• Society of Immortals: All humans on Earth benefit from immortality.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the climax of the first book, Rowan manages to go full One-Man Army on the Conclave, but only because they were completely unprepared. In the next two books, the antagonists make a point to send overwhelming and prepared forces against him and to overcompensate due to their fear of him, which results in him being in distress more often than not.
• Take a Third Option:
  • How Citra and Rowan get out of the whole "one must kill the other" requirement of their exam." Rowan had brutally injured her at the previous Conclave, so after receiving her Scythes' ring, she punches him in the face "ignorant" of the fact that by striking him with her ring, she's granted him immunity from gleaning.
  • It's mentioned offhandedly that this was how the Thunderhead solved the problem of abortion: by creating technology advanced enough that any unwanted pregnancies could be easily removed and placed with people who wanted them, effectively ending the debate between life and choice.
• Take That!: In The Toll, people start fleeing to the LoneStar Region to avoid Goddard's regime. Scythe Nietzsche suggests building a wall to stop them and Goddard shoots it down, saying that "only idiots build walls". This was released in 2019, making it a likely reference to the controversial Trump wall.
• Tantrum Throwing: Whenever Goddard doesn't get something he wants, he tends to go on mass gleaning sprees or, if that's not available, start screaming and trying to break things.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Faraday had one with Curie years before Citra and Rowan were born.
• That Man Is Dead: Right before she goes off in one of the ships, Citra renounces her ring and robe, deciding that Scythe Anastasia is no more.
• Threatening Shark: Because the sea life around Endura can be remotely puppeted through nanites, Goddard sics a school of sharks on the Grandslayers at the end of the second book.
• Touché: Xenocrates' reaction when Citra punches Rowan, giving him immunity when his blood gets on her ring, and then claiming she had no idea that would happen. Xenocrates is initially stunned, then laughs and remarks that Citra will fit right in.
• Uncertain Doom:
  • It's not made clear if Curate Mendoza actually died in the plane crash Rand caused, the plane presumably landed in the ocean so it's likely that his body was still intact but it may have not been recovered by the Thunderhead.
  • It's never revealed what happened to Loriana and Scythe Morrison or the other ships that weren't Astrid or Rowan's. It's likely that some of the ships survived, especially considering Astrid's had the lowest chance of survival and still reached its destination but there are still many ways that the ships could have been destroyed. Gleanings shows that at least three of them were lost but the fate of the rest isn't shown.
• The Unfavorite: Rowan is this within his own family, hence his desire to find purpose in his life.
• Un-person: Agent Traxler erases Greyson's records in order to forge his cover story as "Slayd Bridger". This becomes a problem when Agent Traxler is gleaned and the new probation officer assigned to his cover identity is Locked Out of the Loop.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • "Gleaning" is used as a substitute for a Scythe permanently killing someone. "Ending" is used to refer to people permanently dying from other means.
  • "Unsavoury" is used for a person who would otherwise be referred to as a criminal.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • At the end of the first book when Citra's name is cleared Goddard looses it and goes on a violent mass gleaning, violating the 2nd Scythe Commandment and coming up with a weak justification for violating the Quota.
  • In the second book, Goddard becomes even more unhinged, when his dramatic return from the dead is undercut by Citra sabotaging his attempts to become the MidMerican High Blade. And when he takes that anger out on Rowan, he becomes even more infuriated when Rowan refuses to react to his words.
  • The third book has a very different breakdown when Citra reveals Goddard's hand in the destruction of the Mars and New Hope Colonies, he's actually morose and quiet which shows just how hopeless he thinks his situation is.
• Vigilante Man: Rowan spends the second book hunting down cruel scythes that abuse their positions.
• Visionary Villain: Goddard is extremely ambitious and wishes to mold the Scythedom to be more like him and his followers. When he takes over in the third book we see that his vision is a nightmare of mass gleanings where Goddard has full authority over who becomes a Scythe.
• Vocal Dissonance: Goddard has his head transplanted onto Tyger's body in the second book. This leaves him speaking with Tyger's voice for the remainder of the book.
• What You Are in the Dark: The final exam of all Scythe candidates is to temporarily kill someone they love to demonstrate how dedicated they are to the Scythedom's purpose.
• We Used to Be Friends: Goddard was Xenocrates' apprentice, meaning they got along in the past, but now Xenocrates considers that his greatest mistake.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: One of the central themes of the story.
• Wild Card: Scythe Rand goes back and forth between being a follower of Goddard and an independent. She's largely loyal to Goddard in Thunderhead but goes behind his back to free Rowan from captivity once Goddard spurns her affections. After this she still works for Goddard but seems to be in it for her own desires and not out of loyalty. In The Toll She's a very sarcastic and critical second in command to Goddard and ultimately kills him so she can be with Tyger.
• Would Hurt a Child: Scythe Goddard threatens to kill Esme so to manipulate High Blade Xenocrates.
• Xanatos Gambit: The second book ends on a devastatingly effective one. Goddard returns from apparent death thanks to being transplanted into Tyger's body and runs for the position of High Blade in opposition to Curie. Worried the vote might end up being against them, Citra raises an inquest, citing that most of his body is that of Tyger, who wasn't an officially bejeweled Scythe and thus he is technically not Goddard and thus ineligible to run for High Blade. This gets taken to the Grand Counsel and in the end, they agree with Citra. Goddard, rather than be forced to becoming an apprentice all over again, hacks the island of Endura's computer system and sinks the entire island, not only permanently killing the World Scythe counsel, but also ensuring their ruling never is heard and killing off Curie too. Citra and Rowan meanwhile are locked away in a vault by Curie to ensure they're preserved and can be revived, but they're still buried under 2 miles of ocean. Goddard is left with no opposition to his rise to High Blade.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Scythe Anastasia's preferred method of gleaning. She injects the chosen subject with a time-delayed poison and gives them one month to decide how they wish to die. They can call her to let her know their chosen form of death or let the poison kill them painlessly in a month. If they try to get immunity from someone else, they'll be gleaned on the spot and the poison will instantly kill them if they try escaping to another region.

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