Thunderhead

Neal Shusterman

Book 2 in Arc of a Scythe trilogy

Picking up where Scythe left off, the Scythedom is polarized between the old and new guard. The old guard promotes the solemnity of the job of the Scythe while the new guard caters to the sociopathic tendencies of those who simply enjoy killing. We follow new Scythes Rowan and Citra (now Lucifer and Anastasia) as they play out their roles in the post massacre politics that ended book 1. Interstitial to the "main story" (but actually the driving plot) is the influence and thought process of Thunderhead, the AI that runs everything on earth (except the Scythes). On the surface, this is a traditional and standard fantasy/sci-fi treatment of a possible future that has yet to be designated dystopian/utopian. But the most interesting piece of this writing is the development of Thunderhead. In book 1, the AI was sentient, and nearly omnipotent. Here we see that the AI is really just a teenager. The Thunderhead is nearly omnipotent, but considers the things it does not know as practically irrelevant. So basically it is omnipotent, and therefore basically a god (very much the attitude of most teenagers). The Thunderhead is also discovering what it knows about itself, as separate from what it was taught by its parents, is beginning to push boundaries and assert its own personality, which we see as benevolent, but also petulant at times. I love this idea of a long story arc that allows us to see the aging and character development process for an AI. We talk about AI learning, but we don't really talking about AI personality development. Here we see that both are necessarily interconnected. If only book 3 were available now.
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