The Toll

The Toll (2019) is the final book in the Arc of a Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman. The trilogy is a Young Adult (YA) dystopian series set in a world in which humankind has conquered death. In a universe where disease and aging have been eradicated, chosen figures called Scythes control the population by deciding who must be killed. While Scythedom may seem like a perfect system, the series gradually reveals its inherent corruption and brutality. The final installment unfolds in the aftermath of a disaster that leaves the fate of the world in question, the bloodthirsty scythe Robert Goddard in charge of all resources, and the honorable scythes Faraday, Rowan, and Citra assumed dead. It now falls to the Thunderhead, the AI programmed to serve humanity, and a mysterious figure named the Toll, to save humankind. The Toll was nominated for the GoodReads Choice Award in the Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction category and has been praised for its unconventional ending and its deep dive into ethical and philosophical issues.

This guide uses the 2019 Walker Brothers paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain descriptions of violence and suicide, and instances of bias against people with genderfluid identities.

Plot Summary

The world is in chaos after the events of The Thunderhead (2018). The artificial island of Endura has been destroyed, with most of its inhabitants eaten by sharks. Despotic, cruel scythe Robert Goddard has become the High Blade of the region of MidMerica. As soon as he seizes power, Goddard declares that scythes are free to kill as many people as they like and pins the drowning of the island on his apprentice Rowan Damisch, one of the teenage protagonists of the series. The truth is it was Goddard himself who engineered the disaster.

The Thunderhead, the god-like AI that runs the world, has fallen silent after the drowning of Endura. Seemingly fed up with humanity, the Thunderhead chooses to converse only with Greyson Tolliver, a former Nimbus Agent (representative of the Thunderhead) with a checkered past. However, the Thunderhead’s silence is a ruse. Programmed to act only for the benefit of humanity, the AI is hatching a secret plan.

The Thunderhead directs Greyson to release coordinates for an unknown destination to former Agent Loriana Barchok. The destination is the Kwajalein Atoll, located in the Thunderhead’s blind spot. Scythe Michael Faraday—believed to be dead—and Munira Atrushi of the Library of Alexandria are already at the islands, looking for the fail-safe that Faraday believes the founder-scythes left behind. The fail-safe is to be activated when scythes begin to threaten humanity. The task the Thunderhead assigns Loriana takes her breath away: She is to supervise the building of 42 spaceships which will take people away from Earth to potentially habitable planets. Having assessed that there is little hope for the human species on Earth, the Thunderhead is planning a grand exit for humankind.

Meanwhile, Greyson gains fame because of his unique bond with the Thunderhead. The faction of Tonists—a religious sect with whom he is staying—begins marketing him as “the Toll,” a prophet-like figure. Tonists believe that since the drowning of Endura, the Thunderhead has been infused with the Living Tone, a divine consciousness. The Toll is the bridge between the Thunderhead and humanity. As people flock to Greyson for advice, in parallel, salvage ships bring up the ruins of Endura, among which are 40,000 scythe diamonds as well as relics of the founders of the post-mortal world. The diamonds are particularly coveted because they can help create more scythe rings, and thus, more scythes.

Captain Jerico Soberanis, a marine salvager, and Amazonian scythe Possuelo discover not just the cache of diamonds in a secret vault, but also the deadish bodies of Citra Terranova, the second protagonist of the series, and Rowan in close embrace. Possuelo keeps the discovery of Citra and Rowan a secret and sends the two young lovers to be revived at healing centers in Amazonia. Possuelo divides the scythe diamonds equally among scythedoms, but Goddard eventually manipulates the regions to hand him the diamonds as tribute. This enables him to create new, conscience-free scythes that kill anyone Goddard wants to.

Over the next three years, Goddard’s thirst for power skyrockets. He orders the killing of the Toll, whom he sees as opposing him. Since Tonists are highly critical of Goddard, he begins a bloodthirsty purge against even the most peaceful factions of the cult. Greyson fakes his death, and asks the scythe sent to kill him, Jim Morrison, to join his employ. Now under the radar, Greyson moves around the world, convincing the most extremist sects of Tonists to give up retaliatory violence.

With the Toll seemingly out of the way, Goddard becomes the self-styled Over Blade of North Merica. He also manages to capture Rowan from Amazonia and decides to burn him in a public spectacle, so that people credit him for destroying the world’s most dangerous villain. However, when Rowan is whisked away alive from his funeral pyre, Goddard grows erratic. He orders a mass gleaning of the 30,000 people gathered in the stadium to watch the burning as a punishment for their voyeurism. This terrible action proves a turning point in the story.

After her revival, Citra as Anastasia starts making public broadcasts that suggest Goddard was behind the sinking of Endura. Meanwhile, the Thunderhead creates a new version of itself, called Cirrus. Unlike the Thunderhead, Cirrus is free from the pacts made to the founders. Cirrus can even revive the gleaned, which the Thunderhead is prohibited from doing. Under the Thunderhead and Cirrus’s instructions, Greyson collects the bodies of Tonists killed by Goddard’s scythes and transports them to the Kwajalein atoll. Anastasia heads there as well, as does Rowan, on Cirrus’s instructions.

It becomes clear the Thunderhead wants the dead Tonists to be loaded onto the spaceships along with living crew members, so they can be revived by Cirrus as colonists of future worlds. Citra and Rowan reunite and decide to board a ship. As the spaceships take off, Goddard flies to the atoll, shooting at the departing rockets. He is stopped when his underscythe Ayn Rand renders him deadish. Ayn escapes with Greyson in an escape pod, hoping to revive him. Faraday and Munira use Anastasia’s ring to operate the fail-safe as the last spaceship departs.

As the novel ends, the fail-safe sends a gamma pulse that destroys all scythe diamonds and releases mortal-age illnesses into the world. The illnesses are programmed to occur every 20 years and kill 5% of the human population, acting as population-control measures instead of scythes. Only a few scythes, such as Faraday, are needed now to kill the diseased to release them from their pain. Greyson stays back on Earth and decides to stop conversing with the Thunderhead since, to experience what it means to be human, the Thunderhead briefly possessed the mind of Jerico without Jerico’s permission. Greyson seeks a fresh future with Jerico, while Citra and Rowan arrive in their hopeful new world after a journey of 117 years.