YA book review: Scythe by Neal Schusterman

Scythe by Neal Schusterman is one of my top ten reads from 2017 (it's a 2016 copyright).
This is a world very much like ours, with a few notable exceptions: humans have conquered hunger, disease, war, and misery. All things worth learning have been discovered, and all the information is stored in The Thunderhead-- what our Cloud evolved into. 
Politics and governments are a thing of the past, ever since artificial intelligence took over making decisions without the emotion of politics. Humans have even conquered aging and death. 
However. 
The population numbers must be maintained in order for the planet to be sustainable. Enter the Scythes.It is the job of the scythes to seemingly randomly select five people a week and end their lives forever; no regeneration allowed. 
Citra and Rowan are two teenagers who have, against their will, been chosen as apprentice scythes, and together they study under Scythe Faraday to learn the subtle but vital art of taking life. The scythes are required by law to keep a daily journal, which are public record. As readers we get glimpses of some of these entries. It is here where we encounter great moral and philosophical questions which give this adventurous story depth and will leave readers pondering the base issues long after finishing the novel.
Schusterman has written a gripping novel that is both funny and deep, and readers will be anxious for the second volume titled Thunderhead when it is published in January, 2018. So far, Scythe is especially popular with teen boys, but that could primarily be because that's who I've recommended it to thus far. I need to add a lot more copies of this book as it's proving to be enormously popular!