I'm in love with this series! Neal Shusterman is an amazing writer and his world building is beautiful. Forewarning, this is the third and final book in this series so click here if you want to check out the whole series.
The basic plot of this series is set in the world, far into the future where death has been cured. This is a world where you can jump off a building, be rendered deadish, then within a matter of hours, you're alive again. However, with death being cured, population control doesn't really exist. Earth has far too many people and help fix it, Scythes have been made.
Scythes are people who are trained in the art of death. They take on the name of a famous/important figure from history, don robes, and kill. Their killings result in permanent deaths for those that they target. Each scythe has their own way of killing and their own way of choosing people to die. For example, one scythe chooses two people. He allows one person to live out their ultimate dream for one year before gleaning them. The other dies immediately and quickly. This is his way of maintaining a balance.
Other than Scythes, there is also the Thunderhead. A very intelligent AI that is in charge of absolutely everything. There are no world leaders as the Thunderhead governs all. Jobs are provided and managed by the Thunderhead. The only thing the Thunderhead can't control is the Scythe administration and anything concerning scythes, which creates some very interesting problems.
The series follows two people training to become scythes. They are apprentices under Scythe Faraday. Rowan and Citra are different and although they start out with the same teacher, they end up following two very different paths.
SPOILERS - if you haven't read the last two books
As you know from the previous books, Endura has sunk. Scythe Curie and everyone else is dead with no hope of being revived. Rowan and Citra were locked in a safe containing all the Scythe jewels in hopes that if found they can be revived and help the world from whatever trouble Goddard brings about.
This book starts about 3 years after the sinking. Greyson is now known as the Toll, the Tonist prophet. Goddard is Grand Overscythe of all of NorthMerica and it's regions. Quotas are no longer a thing. Any scythe may glean as many or as little as they want. The world is looking a little bleak and with everyone on Endura dead, no one can refute Goddard's claim that Rowan sunk the city and killed the whole council.
This book is 622 pages! It's a bit of a slow start and a little confusing in that the timeline is not very clear. It switches off from right after the sinking to 3 years later. Without spoiling to much, a salvage team is hired to raid the ruins of Endure to find the Scythe diamonds. What they find as well changes everything. The remainder of the story goes so fast but it is so amazing as well as horrifying in some places.
The Toll was a perfect finish to this series and I highly recommend the series as a whole. The lines between right and wrong, black and white, and good vs evil blur heavily. It's hard to choose between one method and the other but all is for the greater good.