Toll

I’m glad that the tags label this as ‘Dystopia,’ because I’m not sure anymore if the author knows that they wrote a dystopia trilogy. 

I really loved the first book, found the second one interesting, and immediately went into the third after the cliffhanger from the second, but overall I’m disappointed. From where the story started in Scythe to where it ends in The Toll, I’m drawing several question marks. Instead of enjoying the ride and seeing how things wrap up, I’m questioning the author’s decisions. Why are we getting chapters worth of introspection on entirely new characters whose ultimate contributions to the plot are a footnote at best? Why is Rowan sidelined for about eighty percent of the book despite being a major character up until this point? Why does Scythe Faraday spend the majority of the book isolated, despite nothing in his character showing that he would give up that easily? Why is Anastasia’s main role to narrate a retcon about Goddard being even more evil than anyone guessed (despite him being plenty evil already)? Why does Goddard only show up to throw tantrums? Why are Greyson’s legitimate concerns about being made a Christ figure for a religion he doesn’t even believe in pushed to the side because “the Thunderhead is always right”?

Which gets into my core problem with this finale–I don’t think that the Thunderhead is always right, but the author sure seems to. 

The cliffhanger of book two had a great setup to peel back the assumptions that this society seems to run on–that the Thunderhead knows all, that the scythes can self-govern, and that if everyone just finds their place, that everything will be fine. Book two ended on an “everything is not fine” moment--Endura has sunk, the Thunderhead has irrefutable proof that it does not, in fact, know everything, and society has been cut off from the creation it heavily relies on to function. Everything is at a fever pitch, and the villain is poised to steal power. What now?

Apparently, a highly convoluted series of events to go to space. That’s it.

There’s no reforming the scythedom, there’s no discussion on how messed up everything surrounding the Tonists is, and there’s no introspection from the Thunderhead about, you know, not being right about everything. Instead, it triples down on how it “doesn’t make mistakes,” and we're going to space now. With the bodies of Tonists that will be reanimated with the memories of people that the Thunderhead has decided are the best candidates to live again. And everyone accepts this with no further input because it’ll make the villain mad, I suppose. 

There’s a book’s worth of things to go into here about how messed up this resolution is, but I suppose the main issue is that it is the most literal deus ex machina, the god in the machine, ending. Contrary to its statements in the plot, the Thunderhead is presented in the books as an all knowing, ultimately benevolent being that has a plan that human minds cannot fully comprehend, only obey or face oblivion. It is functionally a god. Despite all the focus of the previous books on how humans need to solve human problems, the solution comes from the god in the machine. Or the cloud, in this case. Finding out that its creators kept something from them ends up only being a tiny roadbump in the Thunderhead’s ultimate plan, and it’s wildly disappointing to read.

There’s a bunch of little things that stick out as well. The interstitial chapters in the book end up spoiling the ending if you pay close enough attention. It’s a far cry from how they played out in the previous two books, which was to just give an alternate perspective on what was going on. There’s also a lot of time skipping in the first half of the book, which was a bit confusing to follow at first since the previous two books were written with a linear sense of time, only jumping perspectives when necessary for the plot. In this book, you’ll get one scene that’s taking place in the plot’s present day, and then jump back a few years with no indication to see something else that may or may not be relevant to the overall plot. Personally, I would’ve preferred following Anatasia or Rowan exclusively as they catch up on what they missed instead of jumping around so much. 

Also, I really wanted to like Jeri, since for a minute it seemed like not everything about their character was going to be about their genderfluid identity, but as the book progressed…everything about Jeri was about their genderfluid identity. And then there’s the further problem of the only visible queer character being the one whose body is taken over by the Thunderhead without their consent. The way the scene is written, it’s clear that the author intended for this to be an awe-inspiring scene, but personally I was horrified. The ramifications are hand-waved away at the end of the chapter and also by the wider narrative because “the Thunderhead knows best” yet again. And no, I don't think Grayson telling the Thunderhead he doesn't want to talk to them at the end of the book to be a worthy solution to this problem. Yikes.

Overall, I can buy that the characters believe that they live in a utopian society, and also believe that the Thunderhead thinks it’s always correct, but the narrative never grapples with the incredibly messed-up underpinnings that such a society would have, despite promising to do so in book one. In the end, the series just didn’t live up to its own promises in favor of propping up its all-knowing character as having the only “right” answer. A super disappointing finale to an interesting idea.