Unwind

by Neal Shusterman
PRMS hardcover 335 pages
genre: YA SciFi Dystopia

You can read a plot summary elsewhere. I just want to record a few notes before I head to bed.
Connor - rebel, troublemaker, quick to fight
Risa - ward of the state, raised in a StaHo (State Home)
Lev - a tithe, from the time he was a baby

page 75 - "'People shouldn't do a lot of things,' says Connor. He knows they're both right, but it doesn't make a difference. In a perfect world mothers would all want their babies and strangers would open up their homes to the unloved. In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is."

page 111 - I love the scene in the antique shop with Sonia! "One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have - people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light."

page 231 - "The Admiral has three of his most accessible and well-appointed jets set aside as study spaces, complete with libraries, computers, and the resources to learn anything you want to learn. 'This is not a school,' the Admiral told them shortly after they arrived. 'There are no teachers, there are no exams.' Oddly, it's precisely that lack of expectation that keeps the study jets full most of the time."

page 304 - "The first step is the hardest, but from that moment on he decides that he will neither run nor dawdle. He will neither quiver nor fight. He will take this last walk of his life in steady strides - and in a few weeks from now, someone, somewhere, will hold in their mind the memory that this young man, whoever he was, faced his unwinding with dignity and pride."

page 329 - The conversation between Pastor Dan and Lev - my fave scene! "I still very much believe in God - just not a god who condones human tithing." I should just put a picture of the page here . . . so very, very good.

Shusterman is an amazing author. This one is older than Scythe, but he raises such intense topics within a very engaging story with characters who draw the reader in. Amazing!