Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch are teenagers in MidMerica, the central region of what used to be North America. They’ve each lived 16 years, but they will never die—people can return to previous ages and be revived from death, so humankind is now immortal. The world is governed by the Thunderhead, an artificial intelligence (AI) that observes and controls everything, except for the Scythedom. The Scythedom is group of specialized people who “glean,” or permanently kill, humans to manage population growth. Citra is an active, decisive person, prone to anger, while Rowan is neglected, observant, and more empathetic than most people in the post-mortal age. Each of them has an encounter with a scythe in ivory robes (named Scythe Faraday) that leaves them shaken; when Scythe Faraday invites them to become his apprentices, they are reluctant, but both agree.
Scythe Faraday is an old-guard scythe, meaning that he shuns excess, is never wasteful, and is conscientious about the people he gleans. He gleans each person differently, based on statistics from the Age of Mortality, and attends their funerals. Under his guidance, Citra and Rowan train in weaponry, poisons, history, ethics, and Black Widow Bokator (a martial art developed specifically for scythes). Even though they’re both being trained, only one of them will become a full-fledged scythe. Because of this, Citra and Rowan are competitive, but they also grow fond of each other—despite being warned that romance will not be tolerated.
The MidMerican Scythedom meets three times a year at conclaves, and it’s led by High Blade Xenocrates, an enormous man who wears gilded robes. At the first one they attend, Citra and Rowan witness a split in the Scythedom: there are “old guard” scythes, like Scythe Faraday, and there are “new order” scythes, like Scythe Goddard, who wears blue robes studded with diamonds and performs mass gleanings, where hundreds of people are gleaned all at once. He has three followers, Scythe Volta, Scythe Rand, and Scythe Chomsky.
Citra and Rowan are tested by Scythe Curie, the Grande Dame of Death, who asks each apprentice one question. When Citra lies about the worst thing she’s ever done, she fails the test; in response, Rowan throws his question, intentionally failing. Because of this, Scythe Rand (representing Scythe Goddard) says that having two apprentices doesn’t work, because they’re clearly helping each other rather than competing. To be certain the best one wins, she says, the Scythedom should make the winner glean the loser as soon as they become a scythe. Though Scythe Faraday protests, High Blade Xenocrates approves the motion: In eight months, either Citra or Rowan will die.
Scythe Faraday goes out alone after that conclave. In his absence, Citra kisses Rowan to “get it out of the way” so they never have to do it again. That night, they learn that Scythe Faraday gleaned himself by jumping in front of a train. Though they’d normally be released from their apprenticeship—i.e., not required to glean or be gleaned—something unconventional has happened. Other scythes have stepped forward to take them as apprentices. Citra is taken by Scythe Curie, and Rowan is taken by Scythe Goddard.
Scythe Curie is an old-guard scythe who never planned to take an apprentice. She gleans people that she observes as “stagnated,” or simply done living. She always gleans by stabbing them through the heart without warning. She cooks dinner for the family of every person she gleans, and she encourages them to talk about their now-gleaned loved one. She presents them with the option to kill (not glean) her for catharsis, and they rarely (if ever) accept. Instead, many thank her for the closure she gives them. Citra finds all of this extremely weird at first, but she grows to appreciate Scythe Curie’s methods. She also grows suspicious of Scythe Faraday’s “self-gleaning.” She secretly uses Scythe Curie’s office to access the Thunderhead’s databases, where she searches for evidence of Scythe Faraday’s last day.
Scythe Goddard is the opposite of what Rowan respected about Scythe Faraday. He’s loud, gaudy, and proud; he clearly loves killing. He has a nine-year-old guest/hostage, Esme, who he says is extremely important but won’t explain why. The first thing Scythe Goddard does is throw Rowan an enormous party on his lavish estate (which he was “given” by a man he threatened to glean). The second thing he does is turn off Rowan’s pain-killing/healing nanites, then beat him to a pulp with the help of Scythes Volta, Rand, and Chomsky. Rowan is hurt and furious, and healing without nanites is horrific. As he heals, he befriends Scythe Volta, who is much more sensitive than he lets on. He secretly hates killing, though he does believe that Scythe Goddard is the future of the Scythedom. Scythe Goddard drills Rowan on killing methods, eventually graduating him to killing (not gleaning) real people, who are paid to be made “deadish” so Rowan can practice shooting and stabbing real flesh. Rowan decides that he will intentionally lose the apprentice competition, so Citra will become a scythe and glean him.
At the next conclave, Citra and Rowan meet again for the first time in four months. They’ve both changed a lot, and Scythe Curie encourages Citra to be suspicious of him—Scythe Goddard is like acid, corrupting everything he touches. Citra tells Rowan she’s suspicious about Scythe Faraday’s death and suspects Goddard, and he encourages her to sit on that for now. Their second apprenticeship test is administered by Scythe Cervantes, who has them fight using Bokator. Rowan tries to throw the match, but Citra can see what he’s doing and also tries losing. To be sure he doesn’t win, Rowan snaps Citra’s neck, killing her and disqualifying himself.
Rowan expects to be chastised by Scythe Goddard, but instead Goddard is thrilled and throws him a party. At the party, Rowan reunites with his old friend, Tyger Salazar; he also sees Scythe Goddard and High Blade Xenocrates talk, then Xenocrates jumping in the swimming pool, where he almost drowns. Rowan and Tyger save Xenocrates. After the party, Rowan learns from Scythe Volta that Esme is Xenocrates’s secret daughter—Goddard keeps Esme around to blackmail Xenocrates.
As Citra recovers from dying, she tells Scythe Curie about her investigation into Scythe Faraday’s self-gleaning; Scythe Curie promises to take over the search. While Curie is at the market, Citra is arrested for the murder of Scythe Faraday, and she’s taken to High Blade Xenocrates’s house, where she’s questioned and presented with false evidence. To save herself, she throws herself from the building, intentionally dying. Since her revival is Thunderhead business, not Scythedom business, Citra is safe from Xenocrates until she’s revived.
While she’s deadish, Citra is contacted by the Thunderhead. It’s concerned about the state of the Scythedom but can’t intervene because of its programming, and it predicts that Citra will be pivotal to the Scythedom’s future. It tells Citra a name related to Scythe Faraday: Gerald Van Der Gans. When Citra is revived, she is secretly taken to the Chilargentine Region (in present-day South America), and Scythe Curie helps her escape through Amazonia, to a place called Playa Pintada. Scythe Curie gives her an address and a name—again, Gerald Van Der Gans, whom Citra figures killed Scythe Faraday. At the address, she shoots a man through the knee before realizing that it’s actually Scythe Faraday himself. Gerald was his name before becoming a scythe approximately 200 years ago. He faked his self-gleaning to free Citra and Rowan from having to glean each other, and he’s been in hiding ever since, unaware his plan failed.
With Scythe Goddard, Rowan becomes more and more adept at killing, and he hates that he starts to enjoy it. At mass gleanings, Rowan secretly tries to help people escape, and Scythe Volta secretly tries to glean people humanely before Goddard, Rand, or Chomsky can get to them. Before the final conclave of the year, Scythe Goddard decides to glean a Tonist monastery. In the chaos, Scythe Volta gleans an entire classroom of children, then self-gleans by slitting his wrists. He dies in Rowan’s arms. Rowan confronts Scythe Goddard, who encourages him to kill the Tonist curate, gleaning for the first time; instead, Rowan beheads Scythe Goddard, breaks Scythe Rand’s spine, and beats Scythe Chomsky to death. Rowan burns the Tonist monastery to the ground, and he stops any investigation into his crimes by returning Esme to High Blade Xenocrates.
Citra spends the final months before conclave training with Scythe Faraday in Playa Pintada, then returning to MidMerica when her name is cleared of Xenocrates’s fake charges. At the final conclave, Citra and Rowan are given their final apprenticeship test: killing (not gleaning) a loved one before a panel of judges. Citra compassionately kills her younger brother, Ben, talking him through the process, then stabbing him through the heart like Scythe Curie. Rowan efficiently shoots his mother in the head before the judges finish reading the instructions.
Ultimately, the conclave grants Citra the scythe’s ring, and she takes the name Scythe Anastasia Romanov. Before gleaning Rowan, she punches him in the face with her new scythe ring, which grants him immunity for one year because it touches his blood. Chaos ensues, in which Rowan and Citra say they love each other. With Citra’s support, Rowan escapes, fighting his way out of the conclave. Outside, he finds Scythe Faraday waiting in an off-the-grid car, and they drive off into the night.
In the final excerpt from a gleaning journal, Scythe Anastasia reflects on a mysterious person called Scythe Lucifer who is gleaning unethical scythes. She hopes that he will consider her one of the good ones...the way he once did.
