This series is outstanding. This final book hit all the right notes and brought its several storylines together in a coherent, exciting and generally satisfying way. My review of Thunderhead indicated that there was a biblical tone to that book, and that tone is even more obvious in The Toll. But this is not a series about religion so much as about human nature, politics and belief.
The Toll brings together four storylines. There is the story of Scythe Faraday and his search for the “holy grail,” the rumored fail safe or reset button that the original scythes are said to have developed in case the new world order that they created, with responsible scythes and the Thunderhead working in parallel, failed. Faraday, with the help of a researcher named Munira has discovered a blind spot in the Thunderhead’s knowledge, an unplotted point on the map where a series of atolls and an underground bunker exist. Faraday’s inability to access that bunker and his devastation at the news of what happened to Scythes Curie and Anastasia, bring him so low that he essentially becomes a hermit even when ships and construction crews begin to arrive unexpectedly on the atolls.
Scythe Anastasia’s story begins with her being rescued from the undersea wreckage of Endura and revived three years after her death. Scythe diamonds and Rowan are also found in the safe, but the South American scythe who oversees the recovery is careful to keep the existence of these two people a secret from the rest of the world for as long as he can. An interesting new character is introduced in this storyline: Jerico, aka Jeri, the captain of the salvaging ship. Jeri is from Madagascar, a place where gender is fluid for all inhabitants, and only when you are grown do you make a decision about your sexuality. Jeri has chosen to be both male and female, her form changing with the weather. Jeri is also relatively young and becomes a good and trustworthy friend to Anastasia and later to Greyson Tolliver, aka The Toll.
Greyson/The Toll is the only person in the world with direct access to the Thunderhead, a godlike information system that sees all and knows all, and up until recently, would speak directly to anyone who asked (except for scythes). After the events of book two, all people in the world became “unsavories,” meaning they were no longer allowed to have that direct spoken and immediate communication with the Thunderhead. They can access information online and the Thunderhead could send them tasks to do, but intimate personal communication with the Thunderhead is over and the world is grieving. Word gets out that there is someone who still has this power of communication, one person who is not marked unsavory. Curate Mendoza sees an opportunity and markets Greyson as The Toll, a kind of prophet or holy man, and Mendoza carefully controls when/how Greyson is seen and who can see him. Greyson hates it but the Thunderhead is guiding him and sees this as a means to an end. Greyson has a small entourage including one a true believer from the sect called Tonists and one a scythe. Ostensibly, Greyson is a Tonist – a religious sect that despises scythes and believes in the existence of the godlike “Tone” – but he is only using this as a cover so that he can do what the Thunderhead needs him to do. Ultimately he will have to find a way to rein in the Tonists who have become radical vigilantes and are being used as pawns in Scythe Goddard’s power play.
Goddard has used murderous and unscrupulous methods to consolidate his power in most of North America although Texas is a hold out. The former scythe power structures (a kind of loose federation) have been destroyed and Goddard is poised to be the most powerful scythe in the world, a dictator. He promotes himself as a man of order and peace while annihilating his enemies. Goddard and his supporters want any and all limitations on scythes to be removed. It is quite chilling to read how he accomplishes his goals because it is similar to the way political dictators do it today — turn certain groups into “enemies” who need to be eliminated and bank on most people to do nothing about it because it doesn’t affect them. Goddard has skeletons in his closet though, and as order crumbles and chaos grows, he will have to resort to more extreme methods to hang on to his power.
One way Goddard tries to unite people is by giving them a common enemy — Rowan Damisch, aka Scythe Lucifer. In Thunderhead, Rowan was a rogue scythe, acting as an avenging angel. He targeted scythes who abused their power and authority, most of them followers of Goddard. Rowan had been Goddard’s unwilling apprentice and thought he had eliminated that man once and for all (Book 1 of the series), but Goddard survived thanks to one of his devoted followers. Now Goddard is after Rowan for his own personal reasons but also because it is convenient to make Rowan’s capture and execution a matter of public interest. The whole world, even scythes who don’t support Goddard, thinks Rowan Damisch is responsible for the catastrophic events that led to the Thunderhead cutting off communication. Other than Goddard and his sidekick Rand, Anastasia is the only person who knows the truth of what happened on Endura and of Rowan’s innocence. Rowan is a sacrificial lamb of sorts. Anastasia, however, finds herself amongst supporters who show her how to defeat Goddard — by doing old fashioned historical research and uncovering the truths about the world’s history that have been scrubbed from textbooks.
The way all these storylines and characters come together is really interesting and exciting to read. This book is over 600 pages but it is so good I tore through it pretty quickly. The ending was somewhat bittersweet, but the discovery of the truth, of Goddard’s past, of the original scythes’ plans, was pretty cool.