The Toll (2020)
The Toll is a 2020 juvenile fiction book written by Neal Shusterman.
The Arc of a Scythe trilogy reaches its close in a world still run by scythes and watched over by the Thunderhead, the benevolent intelligence that governs everything except death itself. Neal Shusterman widens his post-mortal world here, gathering new voices across scattered years and distant places as the order that polices immortality fractures from within. Ambition, prophecy, and faith all press toward a reckoning. Written for readers who followed Citra and Rowan from the beginning, this finale trades the intimacy of a single apprenticeship for the sweep of a whole civilization deciding what it wants to become.
Quick answers
What is The Toll about?
The Arc of a Scythe trilogy reaches its close in a world still run by scythes and watched over by the Thunderhead, the benevolent intelligence that governs everything except death itself. Neal Shusterman widens his post-mortal world here, gathering new voices across scattered years and distant places as the order that polices immortality fractures from within. Ambition, prophecy, and faith all press toward a reckoning. Written for readers who followed Citra and Rowan from the beginning, this finale trades the intimacy of a single apprenticeship for the sweep of a whole civilization deciding what it wants to become.
When was The Toll published?
The Toll was published on 3 November 2020.
Who made The Toll?
The Toll was written by Neal Shusterman.
Similar books
The Toll in our writing
- Companion guide: YA Dystopias: The Hunger Games and the Decade the Arena Ruled
A few thoughts on The Toll
Finish the journey, then chase its big ideas elsewhere. Children of Men shares this world's blend of grand stakes and grounded despair as a society confronts its own future. For sweeping, machine-touched storytelling about humanity's next chapter, Horizon Zero Dawn carries the same mix of wonder and warning that makes Shusterman's ending land so hard.
Utopias that quietly decide who has to die
The Scythedom exists because death was solved and someone has to manage the population, and that same cold arithmetic runs through The Giver's community, which quietly "releases" anyone who doesn't fit, Matched's Society, which schedules your final years for you, and Divergent's factions, which decide whose life counts. Children of Men imagines the flip side: a world with no children and just as little faith in the people in charge.
A ruling order that starts to crack from the inside
By the time The Toll opens, the Scythedom's own leadership is at war with itself over what "compassionate killing" is supposed to mean. Mockingjay watches the Capitol's grip come apart from the same kind of internal rot, Insurgent and Allegiant send Tris further into a faction system that no longer holds together, and Shadow and Bone's Ravkan court hides its worst corruption behind good manners.
Series finales that trade one hero's story for the whole world's
The Toll pulls back from Citra and Rowan to show a whole civilization deciding what comes next, the same widening move The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes makes when it digs into the Capitol's early history instead of Katniss's. Sunrise on the Reaping does the same thing from an earlier Games, and Gathering Blue leaves Jonas's story behind entirely for a girl on the harsh edge of the same world.